


Hope There's Someone

by viceroy12



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series, Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: Alternate Ending, M/M, Paradox Ending, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceroy12/pseuds/viceroy12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Paradox Ending: The Future Is Hope)</p>
<p>When Snow arrives in Academia 4XX AF just in time to stop Alyssa from giving Noel and Serah the artefact that would have led them directly into Caius's trap, he tells Hope that he must thwart his own assassination--and that Serah's former guardian Noel must help. With the future suddenly resting in hands more accustomed now to computer terminals than weapons, can Hope survive long enough to save the world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Protector

_You’re going to be assassinated exactly three days from now._

The words wouldn’t leave Hope’s mind as he watched Snow’s motorcycle wink out of existence.

He’d faced death before, of course. Many times. But then . . . he’d been a l’Cie. With powers. Ways to fight back, to heal, and even bring back mortally wounded friends from the brink.

This was different.

_You’re going to be assassinated exactly three days from now._

So much had changed in the last hour. Alyssa arrested as a traitor, the revelation that Caius was stalking the timeline and undoing the work Noel and Serah had done, Snow’s return on his ridiculous Shiva motorcycle, Serah’s leaving. . . . Hope turned to look at Noel, who was staring up at the sky with a thin-lipped expression on his face. “Gone, just like that,” he muttered to himself.

“Snow’s always been like that,” Hope said, trying to fight through the heaviness of fear in his body. It had been a long time, he reflected, since he had felt such oppressive dread.

“Snow?” Noel looked over at Hope. “I meant Serah. I’m supposed to protect _her_. Now I’m supposed to stop protecting her to save you just on his say-so?” A pause. “Er, no offense, of course. You just always seem like you could take care of yourself.”  

“Usually, yes.” _You’re going to be assassinated—_ Hope rubbed his arms, which had broken out in sudden goosebumps under his Academy uniform. The sky felt too big suddenly, the buildings that had moments ago been this new and strange home now a threatening warren of steel and mirrors hiding unseen threats. 

Hope jumped as racing footsteps echoed off the buildings. “Director!” He whirled, hand unconsciously going to his boomerang. Some days he forgot it on his short ride from his quarters high atop the Academy headquarters to the labs. He didn’t think he’d be forgetting it much anymore.  A squadron of soldiers pulled up short in front of him, saluting. Hope recognized the captain insignia on the leader’s shoulder, if not his face behind the impersonal mask. Too much he couldn’t see. “Director. Sir, it’s Alyssa . . . you should come right away.”

Noel held up his hand. “She’s not important. He is. Hope is going to be assassinated in three days unless you keep him under guard at all times.”

The Academy captain turned to Hope. “Director, is this true?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Hope said, turning away from the open sky and heading for the safety of the Academy headquarters. At least he hoped it was safe. He needed to survive long enough to ensure that the new Cocoon would rise in a hundred years. Snow’s other parting words made him glance up at the half-constructed dome looming like a felled crescent moon over the capitol. _Without you . . . we might as well forget about having any kind of future._ “Come, I’ll explain on the way.”

_***_

“Why did you do it, Alyssa?”

She looked up at him mutely from where she hunched, stripped of her Academy garb and forlorn behind the safety glass. They’d bandaged her neck and chest where she had tried to stab herself. A shock of red bloomed against the white of the gauze, the prison garb, the cell.

“I don’t understand. I need to understand, Alyssa. Why did you do this to them? After four hundred years of work, why throw it all away like this?”

Hope had never seen her break down. Not during the long sleepless nights in front of computer terminals, not during the day they decided to step into the gravity well and burn irrevocably forward four hundred years into the future. He had never seen her shudder and gasp so, wiping at her nose and eyes with her sleeves. “You would have done the same thing,” she choked out through her sobs. “You _did_ do the same thing.”

Hope shook his head, adamant. “No. You’re wrong, Alyssa. I would never betray my friends.” _A young boy, hate bright in his green eyes, knife held high as the one he so hated, the one who had protected him, dangled from a ledge—_ no. With a sigh, Hope slumped, back against the glass. “Alyssa, talk to me. After all we’ve been through together . . . please, just talk to me.”

Alyssa was calmer now, her sobs even and controlled. She leaned against the glass, close to him. It made him uncomfortable somehow, but he didn’t move for fear that she’d lose her tenuous grip on herself again. “If they do what they want to, Hope, I will be no more.”

“What? What do you mean?” He turned to face her, pressing his hands to the glass. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“When Cocoon fell, I . . . ” Alyssa took a shuddering breath, then started over. “I was in Bodhum during the Purge.”

The Purge. Those two words were enough. As she spoke, Hope could see that day looming like the broken shell of Cocoon in his memory. Was it five hundred years ago? For him, it was less than a decade. It still felt like yesterday. He could remember her face so well, though she died half a millennium ago. 

“I remember when the soldiers came in. We ran and hid.”

_—when she took the gun I was too afraid to go with her, I was so soft and coddled, just like everyone else, fat and happy lambs for the slaughter—_

“But there was an explosion; I remember being thrown against the wall and seeing the sudden brightness of the sky or searchlights—”

_—but she was brave, she had gone to fight and gone to die for me—_

“Then something happened. I think . . . I think the wall caved in, or the ceiling, something crushed into me . . . I don’t know what it was, but I know . . . ”

_—and I did nothing—_

“ . . . I know I—I died.”

The silence spun out, long and fragile, interrupted only by Alyssa’s quiet sobs. Hope put a hand to his face, roughly wiped at his eyes. “Maybe you’re wrong,” he said lamely. He knew she wasn’t. “Maybe you were knocked out and you came to later on.”

“No!” Alyssa pounded on the safety glass. “Hope, listen to me! I _died!_ The second they resolve the paradox, _my_ paradox, I’ll be gone, and more than gone—you won’t remember me, no one will remember me, and everything I’ve done, all of this I helped build—it’ll go on never knowing me.” She turned away from Hope then. “Go.”

“What?” 

“Go. Just go away. Leave me. I don’t care what you do to me. Nothing you can do is worse than what’s going to happen anyway. I’ll just wait here until . . . until there’s no more waiting to do.”

“Wait, Alyssa, please—”

“ _Go!”_ she was screaming now. “Go go go away!” 

Guards burst through the door to the hallway, batons drawn. “Director!”

“No! No, I’m fine.” Hope waved them down. Inside the cell, he saw doctors rushing in, injecting Alyssa in the arm with a sedative; she sagged in their arms and Hope shuddered as he realized her helpless descent into unconsciousness was not unlike what she would one day experience when Serah and Snow resolved the paradox that allowed her to live. The doctors laid Alyssa down on a gurney and strapped her in place. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks tear-streaked. There were no words, nothing left to do. Hope let himself out. 


	2. Kindred

Noel was waiting for him in the hallway. Hope composed himself. He was always cognizant of the disconnect between his position and his youth; he never let the latter show through. “Have you been here this whole time?”

“I’m your protector now,” Noel said simply, pushing off the wall. He moved with the limber grace of a predator. Even after all he’d been through, Hope knew he’d never managed that casual, deadly fluidity of movement. He had always overintellectualized, always let his mind get in the way of the sheer kineticism of battle. Oh, he’d been alright at it, to be sure, but it was never with that symphony of muscles that Lightning and Fang and Noel innately understood.

Hope realized he was staring. “Ah—right. Thanks.” He didn’t point out that he had a thousand soldiers within com’s reach. “But you can’t just stay glued to my side for the next seventy-two hours, you know.”

“And why not?” Noel half-playfully hip-checked Hope, who bit back a yelp as he stumbled slightly. When was the last time anyone besides Alyssa had joked with him? 

“Well, for one, I’m very boring,” Hope replied, then realized his answer was too serious-sounding. Maybe no one joked with him because he had forgotten how to joke. When had he become so grave? 

“Saving the world is hardly boring,” Noel said.

“Yeah, well, I’ll leave that to you and Serah,” Hope replied.

“I’m not the one Snow said would save the future.” Noel put a finger to Hope’s chest. “That was you.” He spun and walked down the hall ahead of Hope. “So what’s the plan, Director?” he called back, throwing his arms wide. “We’ve got to keep you alive in three days’ time so you can finish building this new Cocoon of yours and get it up. I’m sure you’ve got it all worked out.”

Hope caught up to Noel. What was his plan? “Well, the first thing is to find out who and why now,” he said, thinking aloud. “Alyssa and I were in the gravity well for four hundred years. Why didn’t someone try to take us out then? It would have been easy enough, however well-guarded we were.”

“You weren’t much of a threat until you woke up,” Noel said. “The question is: a threat to whom?”

“Caius, for starters.”

“Right. But he could have come after you at any point.”

“Not if it was necessary that I make it this far—but no further,” Hope said grimly. He had no great illusions that he could have survived so long unless Caius intended him to.

“Perhaps,” said Noel. “But in alternate timelines, you _did_ die. Adam killed you. Until we killed Adam, and you decided not to create it in the first place.”

“Right.” Hope marveled again at how close he had come not only to being gunned down by his own creation, but at how close he had come to perpetuating the cycle of human subjugation to the fal’Cie. The Academy trusted him, but he didn’t quite trust himself. But then, that was exactly why they put their faith in him. “So perhaps in other timelines, I had done what I needed to do in creating Adam, and I was expendable. That would mean that, if Caius is behind this, I haven’t done what I need to do. Which makes sense,” he said suddenly, whirling to face Noel. “The dedication ceremony of the new Cocoon is in three days; they’re expecting me to make a big speech from the balcony of headquarters here. What better time to assassinate the Director of the Academy than while in mid-speech?” 

Noel slapped his fist into his open palm. “So you don’t give the speech and we keep you safe and that’s it! Problem solved.”

Hope shook his head. “It’s not that simple. We _have_ to do the dedication. In a hundred years, we’ll need to load the entire world onto the new Cocoon. If we don’t start working now to convince everyone that it’s what must be done, it’ll be impossible to save everyone.”

“So maybe you don’t save everyone.”

“No! We’re going to save every last one of them. No one gets left behind. Not this time.” Too emphatic. Hope unclenched his fists. “If it’s my life or, in a hundred years, the lives of thousands, I’d rather give mine to save theirs. I made that promise to myself a long time ago, Noel. I won’t go back on it now.” Noel just nodded. Of course he’d understand; he’d come from a future where Hope had failed. Noel knew better than anyone ever could what the cost of that failure would be.

“The other obvious question is: why can’t I just heal you, or bring you back if you’re assassinated? I mean, I’m not particularly good with healing magic—that’s Serah’s specialty, not mine—but there’s no reason—”

“It doesn’t work like that for me anymore.” He rubbed his wrist, a habit he’d developed. “Not since I stopped being a l’Cie. Being a l’Cie is a curse, of course. But in some ways, it is a perverse gift: you are given great strength to do what the fal’Cie command. Healing doesn’t work as well on me anymore, not since I lost my brand and my Focus.”

“Then why does it work on me?”

“I can’t be entirely sure,” Hope said. Guards opened the massive steel doors that led into Hope’s lab. “I suspect it has to do with the fact that, though you are not l’Cie, you are similarly . . . chosen. Serah too. But it could also be the slow change that has spread through humanity since we returned to Gran Pulse—magic is spreading once again, even if I no longer have the gift.” He sighed. “Regardless, it means healing is less useful than science and surgery for someone like me. So there’s no using magic to bring me back from the brink,” he added, thinking of the times Vanille or Lightning or any of the others, really, had rescued him, bringing him back to continue to carry out their Focus.

“Well, we’ll just have to make sure nothing happens to you in the first place.”

Hope nodded vaguely; they both knew that for all Noel’s bravado, that wasn’t much of a plan, and Hope’s life depended on them getting it right. He led his new protector into the lab, where a giant projection of the new Cocoon floated in glowing monochrome. He did his best thinking in here. “We haven’t actually answered anything,” he said, breaking the silence. “It might be Caius. It might be a lone actor. It might be another dissident group like the one that Blitz Squad broke up in 9AF. And even if we know who and the likely when, we don’t know how. Or why. But if we know why, then we can figure out whom.”

“So how do we start looking?” Noel was ever the pragmatist. It was so easy to run headlong down his warren of thoughts all leading like roots farther and farther down; leave it to Noel to cut right through to the thing that needed doing. If he had to face down his own death, he could do worse than have Noel at his side.

“My advisers bring me daily updates. Since waking up here a few months ago, I’ve set up systems to bring me up to speed on the changes that have taken place over the last several hundred years.” He relied on those advisers more than he cared to admit, however, and knew that if would-be assassins had managed to turn one or more of his advisers to their side, he would be none the wiser until it was too late. In fact, they had become, aside from Alyssa, his main point of contact with the outside world. He spent so much time holed up in his lab, orchestrating the new Cocoon’s building and levitation, that time passed him by as surely as if he still remained in his gravity well. For all their closeness in their early years, he and Alyssa had stopped spending time outside of work together. His food was delivered and taken away for him by unseen devices; he ate either here or in his spartan chambers, poring over reports or formulae or schematics. He exercised in the gym in his quarters; robotic voices informed him when he had hit peak performance and when to begin cool-down. He slept alone in a too-big, too-white bed. Hope pulled the holoscreens up in front of him; the computer screens bathed his face in their familiar pale glow. Almost all of his life was spent in front of screens like this. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just had a normal conversation that didn’t involve work or the exchange of vital information. “I’m a person out of time,” he murmured to himself.

“What are you talking about? We have three days,” Noel said, and Hope started slightly. He had half-forgotten the other was there.

“No, no, not that,” Hope said, shaking his head. He turned to face Noel. “I . . . never mind.”

“You mean you don’t belong here.”

Hope just nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment. 

“You don’t know if you belong anywhere.”

He looked away from blue eyes suddenly so understanding, so close.

“Why did you leave?”

“I have work to do.” It came out more harshly than he intended as he stared at the pale holoscreen. It had gone blank, a pale white light like the inside of the gravity well, like the blinding nothing of crystal stasis, of eternity.

“You could have left notes, you know.”

“I didn’t have anything left. Everyone I’ve ever loved . . . they were gone. My mother. Fang and Vanille. Lightning. My father. He died of a heart attack at his desk.” Hope gestured at the vaulted ceiling over a hundred feet above them. “He founded this Academy, you know. It is the life work of the Estheims, I guess. There was nothing for me there, nothing to do but to find my way here, to finish this off. Alyssa told me once that I was working so hard to save humanity that I was sacrificing my own.” He laughed. It was a dry, bitter thing. “And that was _before_ we decided to seal ourselves away and wait until this time.”

Noel’s hand twitched like he wanted to reach out—it was a gesture so fleeting Hope barely caught it—but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Where I come from, I was the last one left. The few villagers left in our hovels withered and died before my eyes until there were only the three of us left—and I saw one of them die and the other leave, blind with rage and sadness. It was . . . unimaginably lonely.” He stared for a moment at the glowing Cocoon hologram, his face awash in the unearthly green light. Cocoon was Hope’s everything. He couldn’t even imagine what it would be like in Noel’s world, a time where Cocoon was gone. “Death seemed the best option, so I walked. I walked and walked, eating nothing, drinking nothing, until Etro came for me.” 

“What I’ve gone through doesn’t really begin to compare,” Hope said. His loneliness had been one born of choice and duty. Noel had been given no choice—only duty.

“I’m sorry,” Noel replied. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that I understand.” Hope found himself transfixed by the look on Noel’s face. Gone for a moment was the tenacity, the determination the other wore like armor. In its place was a sudden vulnerability, a widening of eyes continually sharp for predator or prey, and Hope could not help but remember how young Noel was—several years Hope’s junior, even if the two seemed of an age. In a more peaceful time, they could have been friends.

Well, if there would not be time for peace, then perhaps he would just have to find what peace he could in the time he had.

Stepping forward, he put his hand on Noel’s upper arm. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”


	3. Confidant

The wind was a terrible living thing raking the roof of the Academy headquarters. From up here, though, you could see all of Academia, the sprawling metropolis a testament to everything that humanity had become. They had tamed Gran Pulse, this vast land of myth and monster, forcing it to accept once more the great weight of humanity which had once floated fearful above this place. 

Hope came up here sometimes when he needed to remind himself, when he needed to feel the danger of the frantic scrabbling wind tearing at him, ready to cast him down upon the towers below. There was a certain sense of deathlessness in this measured allegro through time. Not immortality. Just a sense that you could twist and dodge and evade Etro’s grasp. Hubris. Could he sleep far enough to escape time entirely? Humility is a necessary trait in a scientist, and even more so for the Academy’s Director. Being here in this high place brought him low again.

 “That’s Titan,” he yelled, pointing toward the horizon and leaning in close to Noel’s ear. “The second-largest of the fal’Cie.”

“Etro’s blood!” Noel yelled back. “If he’s the _second_ -biggest . . . ”

Hope laughed, but the wind took it spinning off the edge. “You’ve already seen the largest. Fenrir. He blocked out the moon in 10AF—remember?”

Noel rounded on Hope. “Hope. The Cocoon fal’Cie that made you a l’Cie—they all followed Barthandelus, right?”

“And Orphan, in a manner of speaking, but yes. Why?”

“Who do the Pulse fal’Cie follow?”

“They seem to follow their directives as assigned by Pulse, as far as we can tell.”

Noel’s face fell. “So they don’t . . . plot . . . the way the Cocoon fal’Cie did?”

“Actually, not all the Cocoon fal’Cie plotted,” Hope clarified. “Most just carried out their directives as well. Only some of them—like Barthandelus—were actively plotting. Though all have the power to make l’Cie.”

Noel was quiet. Hope followed his line of sight. He was staring at Titan. “And Titan’s purpose?”

“To test all living things in this harshest of worlds. To separate the weak from the strong.” Hope remembered the Faultwarrens all too well. “Titan is . . . if evolution were crunched like a black hole into a brutal and living force, tearing apart everything which enters and is too frail to survive, that would be Titan. At the apex of our powers, we survived his Trials long ago, Lightning and the others and I. Barely.”

“You made it through something like that and you’re worried about an assassination attempt?”

“It was a long time ago, Noel, when I was still a l’Cie and surrounded by my friends. Everything is different now.” 

Noel remained fixed on Titan. “Is that why you brought me up here? To show him to me?”

“No,” Hope said. “Well, sort of. I come here when I want to be reminded of why I am doing all this. Why I have given up my connection to humanity to save humanity.” He looked down at the thousands of metal fingers stretching toward a sky that would soon be filled with another Cocoon. They filled this entire vast valley, the skyscrapers filled with over a billion people whom he would never know. “I didn’t think that’s what I was doing in the earliest days. But as the Academy grew and placed more trust in me just as the populace placed more trust in it, I knew what it was I had to do. Saving Cocoon was just the first act, Noel—and we’re barely getting to the third now.” 

He didn’t meet Noel’s eyes. “I guess I brought you up here because I wanted you to see this too. I wanted you to see what the future _will_ be like. Not the empty dying lands of your time, but something bright and filled with billions of people alive and dancing and laughing and hurting and loving and doing everything that makes us human. I know you know what we’re fighting for. But I wanted you to see it with your own eyes. It helps me, when I grow tired. When at the edges of my thoughts I think I almost remember what being lonely feels like.”

Hope turned to leave, but felt Noel’s hand on his shoulder holding him in place. The grip wasn’t tight, but it had the insistence of the wind in this high place. “You’re not alone, Hope. I’m here. I will be here while we stop this assassination. And I will be here until the new Cocoon rises.” The hold softened into something more gentle, something Hope had never really felt before. “Hey, let’s go inside and figure out how we’re going to stop your assassination and what we’re having for dinner.” Hope turned and caught the edges of Noel’s confident grin. “Right now, both are about equally important to me.”

“I’m afraid my meals are fairly unexciting.” Hope shrugged, but inside it was a cringe—Gods, when had he become so boring? 

“I’m sure the Director eats only the best.” 

Dinner, as it turned out, was a meticulously portioned-out helping of meat substitute, perfectly-cooked vegetables and dark brown bread. This was no surprise for Hope; every meal was a meticulously portioned-out helping of meat substitute, perfectly-cooked vegetables and dark brown bread. He had returned the glass-and-a-half of wine so many times they’d finally stopped bringing it.  

“So you eat this every day?”

“Well, the meat substitute is always a different flavor, and they switch up the vegetables. You have to admit, it’s quite good.”

Noel made a face. “Tastes just like chocobo.” Setting down his fork, “Seriously, though—you never want, oh, a flank of grass-fed albino lobo? A giant hunk of chocolate?”

“Occasionally, if I’m feeling particularly wild, I’ll send down for a glass of milk.”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or if I should be very concerned.”

Hope smiled. “Of course I’m joking. I don’t even like milk very much.”

“That’s it.” Noel stood. Slapping his hand on the wall comlink, he barked, “We need a flan pudding up here immediately. Extra sweet. And send up a dessert wine.”

“I can’t believe you just did that.”

Noel pushed the plates aside and grabbed two wine glasses. “Hope Estheim, I’m your guardian. If you die without eating a flan pudding, I’ll never forgive myself.”

As good as it was, two hours later, Hope was regretting drinking half a bottle of wine. “The room, Noel. I’m glad it’s so empty.”

Noel’s eye contact was disconcertingly intense, Hope noticed. “Why?”

“Because you can’t tell so much if it’s spinning if all the walls are exactly the same.”

“Oh no. Hope, when’s the last time you drank this much?”

“Right now.”

“Right. And the time before that?”

Hope sighed theatrically. “There’s no time before, Noel. The past isn’t fixed and the future hasn’t happened yet. There’s only this, you know, this endless . . . now.” 

“Oh, great, you’re that kind of drunk.” 

“What kind?” Hope got up, staggered over to his bed—white, simple, edges tucked in perfectly--and flopped face-up on it. He felt like the bed’s perfect opposite—disheveled, colored outside the lines. He kind of liked it. He loosened his tie.

“Never mind.” Noel stood over him suddenly, looking down with some concern. “Oh, I shouldn’t have done this.”

“What do you mean? This is great!” Hope threw his hands in the air and laughed. “I haven’t felt so happy—hey, wait, why are you so . . . _normal_?”

“I’m going to assume by ‘normal’ you mean ‘not drunk,’ and the answer is: because this isn’t my first time drinking, Hope.”

“Hey! Who said it was my first time?!”

“Is it?”

Hope wondered if his face looked even redder against the pure white backdrop of bedsheets. “I don’t see why that matters.”

Noel laughed. “It’s nice to see you relax a little, Hope.”

“You too. You’re so serious all the time. We both are. I mean, I know why. The weight of the world and all that. But it’s nice to just forget it for a little while. I never let myself forget. Never. Even in the . . . the thing, the gravity well, I dream about it, or maybe it’s not a dream but it’s the last thing I think of when the lights go out and the first thing when it’s over and I just sometimes feel like it’s so much, it’s so much that I have to do and I want to do it, I need to, but it’s hard and it’s lonely and what if I mess up? What if I do something wrong, some tiny little thing and someone, everyone dies because—”

Suddenly, Noel’s finger was against his lips. It was warm, and trembling very slightly, which was odd, because Noel was always in control of his body. “Shh. Hope.” He was whispering, but Hope could hear every word because he was so close. “You’re going to do fine.”

“Lie down.” Hope tried not to turn redder as he wondered what he was doing. He drew a shuddering breath, feeling Noel’s finger still pressed against his lips, open just a little bit, just enough to whisper. 

Noel pulled his finger back as if burned. Head snapping up with the desperation of the rejected, Hope saw confusion, then something more resolute in Noel’s face. “I should go, Hope. You’re drunk and we’re both very tired.” Noel smiled, but it was a brittle thing. “I’m glad you liked the flan, Hope.” Noel walked to the door, dimmed the lights. “Goodnight.”

“I’ll see you in the morning?” The words came out so small and Hope hated himself for a moment. 

Noel turned back, silhouetted against the light from the doorway, but Hope thought he saw a smile. “Of course.”

And then Noel was gone, and Hope was in the dark, his tie askew, his boots still on. He fell asleep quickly, quickly, so the burning behind his eyelids was just tiredness, just exhaustion, nothing more.


	4. Cipher

Hope sifted through the morning’s data, waving a hand in the air to scroll through updates with more sharpness than was necessary. He felt brittle this morning, and it wasn’t just the lingering headache. It was hard to know what to make of the new report from the Intelligence Division. Against his own wishes, when higher-ups got the word about the assassination, Intelligence had taken it upon itself to to scan all transmissions, including private correspondence, from the last several months. When a sizable encrypted file had shown up on his terminal this morning, he knew that they had found something.

Footsteps behind him made Hope swipe downwards abruptly, a cutting motion that wiped the data from the projection. He turned and saw Noel making his way into the chamber. The silence lasted a moment too long, then Noel said, “You’re up early.”

“I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.” What Hope left out was how he had wallowed in utter embarrassment in the dark for about an hour before a truly punishing workout far above his recommended fitness quota. 

If Noel intended on talking about last night, he didn’t let on. “Found anything?”

“Yes. Here.” Hope pulled up the report. Did Noel really have no intention of saying anything? Truth be told, it’s not like Hope wanted to be reminded of what he had done. “Intelligence sifted through several months of communications. They pulled up this. It’s a series of transmissions between soldiers here and what seems to be some sort of remote command center near Sulyya Springs.”

Noel scanned through the report and whistled softly. “There’s . . . a lot here, Hope.”

“The long and short of it is that sometime around 270AF, a movement sprung up to end the succession of Interim Directors who held the position in anticipation of my return. They wanted to use the military to depose the Interim Directors, find the gravity well and destroy it, and install a Commander who would rule Academia with the military at his back. The movement still exists, though it is much smaller now—and it looks like they may be the ones planning the assassination attempt.”

Noel’s mouth narrowed into a grim line. “We’ve got two days. Let’s take them out before they come for you.” 

“Between you and me, Noel, I can’t pretend there isn’t some validity to their concerns, if not their solution.”

“You’re saying you’re gonna let them come after you?!”

“Of course not. I didn’t ask to be made Director, but I’m going to see the new Cocoon project through. It’s humanity’s only hope. We need to head to Sulyya Springs and see what we can find there. The report doesn’t indicate what they’re planning to try in two days.”

“Right. We don’t have much time. Let’s go.”

Hope shook his head. “I have to alert the commander of my personal squad. They will likely insist on accompanying us to—”

“Hope, are you _insane_?” Noel slammed the doors to the chamber shut, then dashed in front of Hope. “What in the world makes you think that, after uncovering a conspiracy in your guard, that going and telling them you’re off to their headquarters is a good idea?” he grated, poking Hope in the chest with a finger.

“I trust them,” Hope said simply. “And besides, when we get there, what are we supposed to do? We have no idea how many soldiers there’ll be. We’ll need the extra firepower.”

“Did you forget the part where you saved the world once upon a time?”

Hope’s shoulders slumped a little. “That was a long time ago, Noel,” he said. “I’m not that boy anymore.” 

“So you can’t use magic anymore. You’re still pretty damn good with that boomerang, Hope. We’ll be fine.” Noel had lost none of his intensity. “More importantly, you cannot trust them. These are not the soldiers you knew in 13AF. Almost four hundred years of political machinations have gone on since you last checked in, and who knows how much you’re not fully aware of? Who knows how deep this goes? After we get answers, you can bring them back into the fold. But not until then.”

Hope let the silence spool out for a moment. “I’ll need to grab a few things.” He headed for the door. “Meet me here in fifteen minutes. I know the plans for this building—and I know a secret way out.”

Noel grinned. “If we do this right, we’ll be back before they even miss us.”

Hope didn’t mention to Noel that he planned to take a quick detour.

It wasn’t far to Alyssa’s cell. When he arrived, she was catatonic, an IV in her forearm. This was not how she should spend her last days.

A screen winked into existence against the glass. “Good morning, Director. The subject is sedated for her own safety and well-being. When she is conscious, she suffers from psychosis and delusion, leading to self-harm.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Hope said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “When was she last fully conscious?”

“A few hours after your visit yesterday. We tried putting her on antipsychotics, but she refuses anything that isn’t forced.”

“How is she delusional?” Hope feared he already knew the answer, but he had to be sure.

The doctor flipped through a few charts. “She screams about being dead. Insists that she . . . let’s see here . . . that she’s a ‘paradox’ and that she doesn’t belong here, and then she tries to grab anything she can and hurt herself. We can provide audio, if you wish, Director.”

Hope winced. “That will be unnecessary. Thank you, doctor.” He started to wipe away the screen, but then stopped. “Tell me, doctor . . . does she dream?”

“The sedation is too deep to allow for dreaming, sir.”

Hope was silent. He could not get rid of the crushing sense of wrongness, that keeping her imprisoned on what were likely the last days and hours of her life was far greater punishment than anyone should fear to bear. But what could he do? Director he was, but he would be no dictator, and releasing Alyssa would undo the underpinnings of justice that held Academia together.

Still, it was difficult not to order the doctor out and free Alyssa himself. It would have been harder still if she were conscious, if she were able to give voice to her plight.

“Director, perhaps this is overstepping my station,” the doctor said, “but in a moment of clarity, she did want to convey one last message to you. She asked that you forgive her for what she has done.”

A gut punch. Wordlessly, he waved his hand and the screen dissolved. He did not need the doctor to see what came next. She looked so harmless, a victim really, lying thin and unconscious beneath the sheet. The doctors knew no better—they assumed she would stand trial—but Hope did. Serah and Snow would resolve the paradoxes. She would never wake again.

He had lingered too long; surely Noel would begin wondering where he was if he stayed. Before he turned, though, he put hand to glass, as if she would feel it, as if he could make her stay. “I forgive you, Alyssa,” Hope said, “and whatever happens, I promise I won’t forget.”

It was no great lie when Hope sent a missive to his staff claiming to feel ill. There wasn't much worth taking in his quarters. Only one thing, really. He clasped the band of the manadrive around his wrist, where his l'Cie brand had once been. It felt heavy, like a manacle. Hope ghosted down a narrow service corridor and through a side door into the chamber where the massive hologram of Cocoon hovered silently overhead. Noel waited there, weapons and rucksack at his side. “I’m ready,” Hope said. “Let’s go.”


	5. Companion

Leaving the city was surprisingly easy. The Academy had fostered an open society, which meant that roads in and out of Academia were not guarded against exit and entry. Hope had taken off anything that remotely resembled badges of office, and Noel’s attire, while unusual, did not attract much notice in a city of such size and diversity. 

Beyond the city walls, chocobos were plentiful; astride two of the graceful mounts, Hope and Noel traveled quickly across the Archylte Steppe, evading the few potentially dangerous creatures in their path. Riding across the Steppe reminded Hope almost painfully of the first time he had seen this place, in the company of the truest friends he had ever known. On that first day, he had felt so small in this massive, dangerous place—so sure that he would be an impediment, that it was only a matter of time before his own weakness meant someone else got hurt. He had nearly given up that day. Nearly, until he found he had more strength than he had ever thought, and that these friends were part of that strength. That day, and all the days after, he’d never felt so terrified and yet so sure that these people, strangers just weeks before, would protect him with their lives. 

Now they were scattered hopelessly. Lightning was trapped in an endless battle beyond time; Snow had taken Serah and were mucking around in Gods-knew-when; for all he knew, Sazh was long dead.

And then he knew exactly where two of them were, shimmering just out of reach.

After several hours’ hard riding, they reached a cavern complex in the mid-afternoon. Hope held up his hand and signaled Noel to dismount. “Is this it?” Noel asked, peering into the cavern with a dubious expression.

“No, and we’re still some ways away,” Hope said. “This is the Mah’habara Subterra. We’re going to hitch a ride here with an old friend.” Hope had long possessed the most control, if “control” applied when dealing with a fal’Cie, over Atomos. Hope pulled a light free from his utility belt and held his boomerang at the ready. “The subterra is crawling with leftover Pulse automata and the occasional feral beast. We should tread lightly.”

As they traveled deep into the cavern complex, Noel whispered, “We haven’t encountered anything yet. Is that odd?”

“Very,” Hope whispered back. “I can only assume that in the intervening years since we were last here, many of the automata have stopped functioning. Either that or the renegade soldiers took out what was left here.”

Noel was silent as the import of what Hope was suggesting sunk in. “Alright, so there might be more soldiers than we were expecting. Where are you expecting to find them, anyhow?”

“The report suggested that they were at the far end of Sulyya Springs.”

“You expect we’ll get to the Springs today? Isn’t it pretty far from here?”

“In a few minutes, we’ll find that old friend I mentioned. Atomos.”

“The fal’Cie?” Noel sounded somewhere between concerned and incredulous. “Look, I’m all for a fight, but I don’t know that your first time back in the ring should be tangling with a fal’Cie. I was thinking maybe some nektons—”

Hope laughed. “We’re not going to fight Atomos, Noel. He’s going to give us a lift. Here, I’ll show you.” Hope took off down the hallway ahead of Noel, incautious, and that was when it happened.

Later, all Hope could remember was a flash and a loud crack, and suddenly he was flying both backward and forward as something slammed into his chest and Noel crashed into him from behind, pulling him to the ground. Sideways, face planted into the cold stone, he saw Noel’s boots as he sprung up with blades out, graceful as ever, and carved into the Pulse automata that had sprung to life.

After the momentary shock had worn off, Hope felt at his chest desperately, expecting—judging from the pain—to feel a massive hole or the sickening wetness of blood. Instead, everything felt normal. Looking down, he realized that the nanofiber outfit he wore was, in fact, capable of stopping old Pulsian ammunition. He was going to have a truly horrific bruise, though. Drawing his boomerang, Hope used his position to take the automata by surprise, sending the weapon on a wide arc, its sharp edge slicing through the ancient attackers with ease.

With some difficulty, Hope pushed himself off the ground. Noel’s head whipped around as Hope stood. “You alright?”

“I’ll be fine,” Hope said grimly, slinging his boomerang at the automata again. The sudden stab of pain as he stretched his arm to throw almost blinded him. He threw himself out of the way of another staccato burst of enemy fire, grunting audibly as he hit the ground. Rolling back to his feet with something like his old battle reflexes, he and Noel smashed the remaining hulks to the ground.

“Another benefit to being a l’Cie,” Hope said through ragged breaths as he sheathed his boomerang and rested on one knee for a moment. “It’s like constantly having a surge of adrenaline. You’re faster, stronger, _better._ I feel like I’ve aged thirty years, not thirteen.”

“Actually, you’re more like four hundred,” Noel said. His concerned expression belied his light tone as he knelt beside Hope. “Do you want to go back, Hope? We can bring help.” 

Hope bristled, knowing full well that Noel didn’t want to bring in the Guardian Corps. “No.” He got up, hiding the pain radiating from his chest and shoulders. “We go on.” Fumbling open his belt pouches, Hope pulled out a small syringe of painkiller and stabbed himself in the shoulder. He was proud he didn’t flinch. “Atomos is right here. Let’s get to Sulyya Springs. We’ll camp for the night and I’ll be better by morning.”

“Alright—as long as you’re sure,” Noel said, holding out a hand to help Hope up. Hope refused, standing upright on his own. The painkiller kicked in quickly enough that within a few steps, he felt able to flex his shoulders again. Fortunately, they encountered nothing else on the path to Atomos. It was just as Hope remembered: a seething boulder the size of a hill, poised between stillness and explosive motion. Hope held out a hand and cast about with his mind, suddenly aware that without his l’Cie brand, he might not be able to commune with Atomos in quite the same way.

He needn’t have worried. Atomos rumbled to life, and the strange almost-mind that touched his—the Pulse fal’Cie often seemed more elemental than their Cocoon counterparts—seemed to recognize him. The gigantic fal’Cie rotated, exposing its hollow core to Hope and Noel. “After you,” Hope said, some of his confidence restored.

Noel hesitated. “I . . . we’re going to just hop in?” Hope saw his hand twitch unconsciously in the direction of his blades. 

“Yes—I’ve done it plenty of times.” Hope hopped in first after all, grabbing hold of the stalactite-like formations jutting out from the inside of the fal’Cie. “A few tips: hang on tightly, close your eyes and try to do this before lunch.” Noel leapt in and Atomos immediately thundered forth, inexorable, winding through the tunnel complexes it had carved over the millennia. When it came to a stop some time later, the two leapt out into a tunnel sloping upward. Even from here, Hope could hear the white noise of the small waterfalls of the springs. “It’s right up ahead,” he said, gesturing.

“Let me go first,” Noel replied, unsheathing his blades. “No more surprises.”

Hope merely nodded. Noel stalked down the corridor; behind him, Hope extinguished his light as illumination from the springs spread through the cavern. Together, Noel in the lead, they stepped into Sulyya Springs.


	6. Reminder

Little had changed in four hundred years; in fact, for all of the constant cascade of water, Sulyya Springs seemed almost frozen in time. There was something about this place that was reminiscent of Cocoon’s cathedrals, not only in size but in the reverential hum and blue and green-tinged light, as if filtered through stained glass. Wan shafts of sunlight filtered indifferently down; with the imminent sunset, even that faint illumination would soon be overtaken by the bioluminescent glow of thousands of plants and small creatures which had learned in this dark place to create their own light. A breach in the cavern let in both sky and water like a curtain blotting out the surface world. The water pooled and ran in rivulets and cascades into a series of subterranean lagoons, each filled with plants and separated by smooth, time-worn outcroppings of rocks. Hope and Noel made for a secluded outcropping surrounded on all sides by cavern and rock formations. Inside was a small pool and a lip of stone wide enough for a small campsite. “From here, we shouldn’t be visible from any angle, provided we don’t light a fire,” said Hope.

“And the soldiers aren’t anywhere near here?”

“The report put them much deeper in the cavern complex,” said Hope. “And we’ll hear Atomos coming. We’ll feel it too.”

“Then let’s settle here and set out early to do recon,” Noel replied, opening his rucksack and pulling out blankets and food. “So how did this report come about again?”

Hope was quiet for a moment. “The Intelligence Division went through several months’ worth of emails and other missives,” he said reluctantly. 

“Oh. And you’re okay with that?”

“What, going through private information like that? No. It was done despite my own misgivings.”

“But it got us what we needed to know.”

“Perhaps.” Hope was done with the topic, and he knew it showed in his tone.

“And do we still think Caius has something to do with this?”

“Hard to say,” Hope replied. “It’s certainly a logical assumption, but it seems a stretch that he would plan for this across almost four hundred years, setting up the separatist movement and keeping it going until now, just to get to me. There must have been easier ways to do it.”

“Don’t underestimate Caius. He has had all the time he needs to lay his plans.”

“True. But this could just as easily be something that just happened here on its own. It’s not infeasible. In fact, it’s very likely. I could understand why people would grow tired of just waiting around for a Director who hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years to show up again.”

“These people love you, Hope. It’s obvious.”

“Whether that’s true or not—and I’m not conceding that it is—all it takes is a few angry people.”

“Well, perhaps we’ll get our answer tomorrow.” Noel unfolded a set of weatherproof nanofiber blankets. “In the morning, before we break camp, let’s go over the plan.”

By the time they set up their campsite, the painkiller was beginning to wear off. Hope knew his stiffness and hesitation were becoming more and more visible, reflected in Noel’s watchful glances. Finally, when Hope was rising from a crouch and his left arm gave out from under him, Noel set down his rucksack. “Let’s have a look at that injury.”

“I’m fine,” Hope said, and his defensiveness sounded peevish even in his own ears. Too much of this reminded him of being fourteen, the weakest one, always the recipient of the over-the-shoulder glances: _Oh, he’s still alive?_ “Really, Noel,” he continued, modulating his tone. “A good night’s sleep and a round of painkillers is all I need until we get back to Academia.”

One look at Noel’s face and Hope knew that his argument wouldn’t pass muster. “If you’re not strong enough to face these renegade soldiers tomorrow, we’re not going forward. I’m not going to let you risk your life like that.”

“Alright.” Hope turned around, facing away from Noel as he unbuttoned the shirt that was the only layer protecting his suddenly-pounding heart. He slipped it off his shoulders and held it in his hand as he turned, naked from the waist up and feeling incredibly vulnerable.

“Well, that bruise is certainly not going to fade by morning,” Noel murmured as he looked at Hope’s torso. He stepped closer, inspecting the wound, and Hope looked down both to break contact with Noel and to see for himself. An ugly purple contusion had welled up below Hope’s left collarbone, spreading across his left pectoral and part of his shoulder. Noel put his hand on Hope’s chest, his fingers probing clinically, and Hope flinched even though Noel’s touch was gentle. “It’s pretty swollen too,” Noel said. “If you have something we can use, we should wrap it to compress it and keep the swelling down.”

Hope watched, mesmerized, as Noel’s fingers traced their way across his skin. Memories of the night before flooded into his mind and his cheeks colored with embarrassment even as he hoped Noel’s touch, as dispassionate as it was, wouldn’t stop. “I have gauze in my pack, but—” he stopped himself before he could come up with excuses for Noel to stay where he was.

Alas, Noel removed his hand, instead scrutinizing Hope’s chest again. Hope fought the urge to squirm. He should work out more. Oh, he was fit enough, but Noel was all whiplike muscle, toned in the way of someone who is in constant motion. “Hope, I know you said healing doesn’t work on you in the same way anymore, but I want to try it anyway,” Noel said. “Is that alright?”

“S—sure, I guess every little bit helps.” Hope swallowed hard and tried to keep his teeth from chattering. Cold, or nervous anticipation? Honestly, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t agree to right now. “Go ahead.”

Noel laid his hand gently on Hope’s chest, closing his eyes as he did so. Hope took the opportunity to glance—no, stare—at Noel’s face. His fine features were taut with concentration, thin lips parted slightly and teeth gritted. A warmth Hope recognized from long ago suffused his body, radiating outward from Noel’s hand, spreading from his chest upward and outward and through him. Hope gasped slightly.  It felt so intimate, this touch, this connection as Noel channeled his own life force into Hope’s body.  At the same time, a familiar virescent glow enveloped Noel. It had been a long time since he had seen that light. It reminded him of growing things, of the first flowering of spring, of love.

And then it was over. Noel let his hand drop. The warmth faded, the light went dim, and the pain returned. Hope looked down again; his bruise was unchanged. “I guess you’re right—it didn’t work, did it?” Noel asked.

Hope shrugged, turning away slightly. He didn’t want Noel to see his face, what he knew was in his eyes. He didn’t let himself remember how much he missed these things. For a moment, for one brief and shining moment, he had allowed himself to believe that this might be different, that he would once again feel the magic he had lost, that Noel would not let go.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” Hope murmured, tugging his shirt back on. Buttoning it up again and ignoring the pain as he did so, he took several deep breaths to calm himself, then turned. “Thanks for trying, Noel. It was worth the effort, even if it didn’t work.”

“You’ll be better in no time,” Noel replied. His eyes were searching, concerned, and Hope knew they were thinking the same thing.

“I’ll keep myself out of trouble tomorrow,” Hope said. “I promise.”


	7. Catalyst

Hope rose while Noel was still deep in slumber. He had spent the night only fitfully asleep until he finally admitted to himself that he was nervous—and only then, paradoxically, had he been able to find rest. Now he was up entirely too early—light had yet to filter through the opening that led to the sky—but as long as he was awake, it made sense to be ready. Opening up his belt pouches, Hope took out a second syringe of painkiller and administered it, then tidied his small bedroll.

With those simple tasks done, Hope decided that if he were going to die today, he’d prefer to die clean, thank you very much. He pulled out a fresh set of clothing and considered his options. He couldn’t go far from their secluded campsite, both because he would be easily seen by soldiers and predators and because the fal’Cie Bismarck trawled the deeper pools here. There was a shallow area nearby—a secluded cove which would afford him some privacy—so he took his clean clothes and ducked out of sight.

The water here was much shallower than he expected, barely coming up to his waist, but it would do. Hope doffed his dirty clothes and folded them neatly on a rock before he slipped in. It was so cold his toes cramped up, but he gamely dunked his head under the water long enough to soak his hair and opened the all-in-one soap pad he’d brought in his pack.

It was then, of course, when he was waist-deep in freezing water and covered in head to toe in soap, that he heard the rapid splashing footsteps of someone approaching at a run. Frantically, Hope did an awkward run-swim maneuver for his boomerang, which he’d left tucked into his dirty pants, and dived for it just as the splashing stopped. Snatching his weapon, he wheeled around, ready to strike.

Noel stood knee-deep in the water, weapons drawn. He was wearing nothing but a pair of black underpants, but Hope considered that it was far more than he currently had on, unless his lingering soap bubbles were particularly artfully arranged. The two stared at each other for a moment. A long, absurd moment. 

Then Noel started laughing. Hope spent about four seconds being completely indignant before joining in. “I thought you had been taken,” Noel said when he’d caught his breath. “I didn’t expect to find you like . . . ” he gestured helplessly. “How are you even able to bathe in this? The water’s _freezing!_ ”

Noel was right—the water was incredibly cold. Suddenly, Hope thought about particular realities of male anatomy in cold temperatures. He felt his face turn bright red. “It seemed like a good idea at the time . . . I swear I’m not always an idiot.” Hope set down the boomerang he was still holding. “This is the second time you catch me looking like a fool,” Hope muttered, grabbing for his clothes.

“Second?”

“Never mind.”

“Well, if you’re not finished,” Noel said, changing the subject, “I was about to offer to do something about the temperature.”

For a wild moment, Hope had no idea—or the wrong idea—about what Noel meant, and he blushed even more. “I meant with magic!” Noel said, perhaps having noticed Hope’s expression.

“Oh, uh, well, sure,” Hope stammered, still holding his smallclothes against himself—though now, he realized with mounting chagrin, for the opposite reason. He knew he found Noel attractive. He’d dealt with that yesterday, after the previous evening’s drunken quasi-advance. He also had known for a long time that he liked men—he just pushed it to the back of his mind with everything else that wasn’t his work.

Noel had rejected him. Hope hated the memory, still humiliatingly sharp for its recency, but he had pried it apart with the cold dispassion of morning. Noel had been abundantly clear that he didn’t want what Hope had wanted in that moment. But what had Alyssa said? That he was working so hard to save humanity that he was losing his own? And what if he did die—did he really want to live his whole life without not only ever having even kissed someone, but even ever _trying_? 

Hope watched as Noel jammed his blades into the soft earth beneath their feet and placed his hands in the water; he couldn’t see anything, but he could tell that Noel was doing something—channeling fire into the water, no doubt—to the pool, because suddenly warmth suffused the water around his thighs. It felt like courage. Or like he had peed himself with fear. Hope allowed himself to set his smallclothes down and wade in Noel’s direction, closing the distance between them. “Thanks, Noel,” he said, deliberately keeping his hands at his sides though they trembled.

Noel looked up from the pool, shaking his hands free of water. Droplets hit Hope’s chest, trailing hot down his skin. “Uh, sure, it was nothing—well, it’s not nothing, I mean, but—”

Despite the change in temperature, Hope felt his teeth chattering as he said, “You could—who knows when we’ll be able to freshen up next, so maybe you should . . . ” he waved a hand lamely.

Noel looked down at himself for a moment. Without looking up, he said, “It was because you were drunk.”

It’s a good thing Noel wasn’t looking at him, because Hope felt himself blush even more. “What do you mean?” he asked, even though he knew exactly what Noel was talking about.

“I’m supposed to be your protector,” Noel said, and Hope felt an incongruous spike of excitement at hearing the anguish in the other’s voice. “It’s not okay for me to—to take advantage—”

Acting on impulse, Hope closed the distance between them, aware of his nakedness in a way that made him both terrified and elated to be so open, so vulnerable. He took one of Noel’s hands and pressed it to his chest. It was a wonder that Noel did not resist, though he did look up sharply. Hope ignored the flicker of uncertainty he saw there, pushing past it to the greater desire. He put his hands on Noel shoulders and, standing slightly on tiptoe to match Noel’s height, brought their lips together.

It lasted only a moment, that kiss, but Hope knew. He knew when Noel didn’t pull back, when Noel’s hand over his heart trailed up to his neck and held him there, when Noel moaned slightly as he felt Hope’s body press against him. Hope pulled away first, before Noel did, and when he met Noel’s eyes this time, the uncertainty was gone.

“Hope, I—” Noel began, but Hope held up a finger, cutting him off.

“Whatever role you were assigned doesn’t preclude you from taking on the role that feels right. I might need a protector. I might not. But what I really need is—” and here Hope stopped, words superseded by a sudden inability to speak past the tightness in his throat.

“I know, Hope.” And now Noel stepped forward, this time taking Hope in his arms in an embrace. It was the kind of touch Hope had almost forgotten how to desire. When they pulled apart, Hope found himself staring at Noel as if for the first time. Unlike Hope’s own skin, which l’Cie powers had kept virtually untouched, scars traced a delicate story on Noel’s body. Hope knew too well that it was a violent history despite its brevity. With trembling hands, Hope touched the beautiful map of his skin, a bemused wanderer in a _terra nova_ he navigated by instinct, his compass desire.

Hope’s exploration was cut short by the staccato burst of static from a comlink, explosively loud in the silence, and the heavy footfalls of metal on stone. A chill that had nothing to do with the water’s temperature ran through Hope as he made eye contact with Noel.

“Guards,” Noel mouthed, and Hope nodded. Noel drew his blades from the water, then whispered, “Let’s wait for them to pass, then follow.”

Hope drew behind Noel; his boomerang was too far out of reach to grab without splashing through the water, to say nothing of his body armor. “They seem oblivious to our presence,” Hope murmured. 

Noel nodded, all business now. “Which means that the hunted becomes the hunter.”

“It’s satisfying, I’ll admit,” Hope said as the footsteps receded. 

“Okay,” Noel said. “Get dressed. Let’s stow anything we don’t need here where it won’t be easily found and follow them.” As Hope headed for his clothes, he caught Noel’s eyes lingering too long on his backside. “The sooner we wrap this up, the sooner we can get back to Academia and we can . . . explore these newfound roles you have for me.”


	8. Conspirator

It did not take long for Hope and Noel to shadow the renegade soldiers to the cavern that served as their hideout. Hidden in shadow and magic, they quickly counted ten men as they punched a code into a steel door installed into a cavern wall. The men went within.

“I caught the code. Do we follow?” Hope whispered, readying himself.

“We wait,” Noel replied. “Let’s see if we can get inside without bloodshed. We can always get the drop on them after they leave, but if we try to take them inside their hideout, the odds will be against us.”

Hope nodded and crouched, waiting. Every part of his body was tense with anticipation, waiting to be found or forced to attack. They did not wait long; within an hour, the men emerged once again, heading back the way they had come. 

Noel and Hope waited several minutes until the men had receded, then Noel nodded. “Let’s go.”

Hope punched in the code he had seen the soldiers use. A soft series of clicks announced that the door was open. Noel put a hand in front of Hope, then gestured that he would take the lead. Noel pushed open the door, entering blades first and flattening himself against the wall. A moment passed, then he waved Hope in.

“It’s just this one room,” Noel said, gesturing around. “And it’s empty.”

Not exactly empty, Hope noted: there was a terminal at one end, half-full weapons racks and simple furniture—tables and chairs and a series of bunks. This was clearly a place occupied for brief times by a few soldiers; even the ten they had seen would fill the room uncomfortably. 

“Everything we need is likely to be here,” said Hope as he made for the terminal. Inspecting it carefully before touching it, he said, “Looks safe—and it doesn’t even look like it’s encrypted in any way other than the system passcode itself. This should be easy.” He pulled out a datasphere and opened the terminal.

“So are you just going to copy everything?” Noel asked, watching the door and glancing over his shoulder at Hope.

Hope shook his head. “Give me a few minutes to parse all this and find what we need.”

A tense, silent few minutes passed as Hope dug into the system. “Interesting,” he muttered. “They kept this off of every network. For all intents and purposes, this is a standalone terminal. Almost useless, really, except for relaying simple information. Information . . . like this!” he said, triumphant. “Got it. It looks like an encrypted set of orders and a list of standby cells—well, it was encrypted until now.” Hope slipped the datasphere into the terminal. It glowed as he began the transfer.

“Well, that’s all the proof we need,” Noel whispered as the decrypted instructions scrolled onscreen. 

Hope pulled the datasphere free and tucked it into a zippered pocket. It would automatically upload into his own systems back in Academia, but he irrationally wanted the hard evidence anyway. “What now?” he asked. “We have the full list of names.”

“We take them down.”

As if in response to Noel’s statement, there was a quiet _tink-tink-tink_ of something metal rolling along a stone surface, and then a soft thud as it struck the metal door.

“They know we’re—”

What happened next was an explosion of violence the likes of which Hope had not known in years.

As the door blew open in a shower of fire and smoke, Noel leapt forward, throwing a hand out. A gout of flame erupted in a wall, catching some of the soldiers. They screamed and tried to back away, but the living flame was an extension of Noel’s will. It followed them into the cavern corridor as he stepped forward, his face twisted in what was either concentration or rage. The shrieking stopped. The smell of burnt flesh and hair choked Hope as he drew his boomerang and crouched near the terminal, ready to attack.

The fire burned itself out. 

Once, when he was younger and every single day was a dance on the edge of the sword, some terrible amalgam of fear, adrenaline and confusion had inured him to the deaths of other humans. In those days, he had had no choice; it had to be done. Now, though, with the distance of time and age, there were no shields against the cruel reaping as he and Noel collided with the renegade soldiers.

Spurred by need and unburdened by Hope’s misgivings, Noel was almost balletic as he moved among and through the soldiers. Nothing touched him; nothing _could_ touch him, so unerring and economical were his movements. His was a spare and savage arc ending at Hope’s side where it began. Meanwhile, Hope’s own boomerang curved and carved through the ranks, thinning them and returning to his hand, a scythe with no handle.

When the last of them fell, a light filled the chamber, heavy and golden like a late summer afternoon, its forgiving illumination a mockery of what had been done here. Hope looked up to see the sudden source of the light.

It was a Gate.

The near-sun light filled the cavern, casting a beatific, incongruous glow across the faces of the slain soldiers. In the golden light, they could be sleeping, off-duty, dreaming.

But the light fell as softly on ragged flesh, hot viscera spilling across these once-beautiful caverns, the blood along Noel’s blades, his own boomerang. Hope turned away, wiping his weapon back toward some semblance of cleanliness. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking, though they had been steady in battle. 

When he looked over, Noel was standing before the gate, his hand outstretched. “I don’t know why, Hope, but I think this time, we’re both supposed to go.”

Hope had his doubts, but he stepped forward as much to get away from the carnage as anything else. Surprisingly, the gate seemed to respond, glowing brighter as he neared in a way no gate ever had before.

“Hope, wait, don’t get too close—it’ll suck you in—” Hope felt an urgent yank at his shirt as his legs lifted off the ground, the gate pulling him inexorably forward. Glancing back in alarm, he saw Noel floating beside him, his fist wrapped tight around Hope’s shirt. The sudden rush of relief he felt was mirrored in Noel’s eyes. Wherever the gate led, they would go together.


	9. Witness

Gunfire, staccato, nearby. The smell of smoke and ozone. Screams. Running feet.

As Hope and Noel touched the ground, Hope swiveled around. For a brief moment, he knew only confusion within and without. Then, out of the chaos, details came into focus: the eerie green glow of the gunships of Cocoon, the rushing phalanxes of armored soldiers, the vast numinous structure looming over all.

He was in Bodhum during the Purge.

Realizing where he was did nothing to quell his inner confusion, however. His first thought was for Alyssa; had the gate offered them a chance to keep her from vanishing? But he had no idea where to find her, other than that she had been in a collapsing building. He whirled, looking for anything that could be a place where she would be—a school, a mall—and that was when he saw him. A boy, dressed in the white garb of a school uniform, barely visible behind a pillar. Hope knew that boy was trembling and staring, staring at a tall blond man leading a small, fiercely determined mother toward trouble, toward her death.

But now—

Unexpected tears blurred Hope’s vision. Did he have a chance to change his own history? If he ran, now, he could stop Snow, could tell his mother to turn back, to take care of her son not by fighting, but by fleeing—or he could bring down the gunship that collapsed the bridge . . .

There she was. Not much older than Hope was now, he realized. What would she think if he ran up to her? Certainly she wouldn’t recognize him; how could she? But if there were time, he would want to tell her, would at last see her proud of who—

—of who he had become—

Then, in a breathtaking moment of terrible clarity, Hope understood everything.

Caius wasn’t here to toy with Alyssa’s fate. He was here to toy with Hope’s.

In moments—how long, really? Hope wasn’t sure; sometimes memory’s playback made this moment seem fast; other times it played out so slowly—the gunship would fire on the bridge. His mother would rush forth to save Snow, firing on the gunship. In the ensuing combat, the bridge would collapse and she would plummet into the void torn loose by the fal’Cie, and in so doing set Hope on his inexorable path to this point, to then and to now.

The gate hadn’t delivered him here to save his mother. It had brought him here to make sure that she died.

As they thwarted Caius’s assassination attempts one by one, marching closer and closer to their goals, Caius’s last hope would be to stop Hope entirely. If Caius’s initial plan, to allow Hope to build the new Cocoon and then destroy him before it could be properly launched, had been beaten back, then his next best recourse would be to keep Hope from ever becoming part of the Academy his father had founded.

And what one thing would keep the Estheims from taking the path that led to what they had become?

If Hope’s mother had never died, Hope would not have become l’Cie.

It was the terrible truth of this tragedy that out of adversity had come the finest achievement of the Estheim family—the hope for the survival of humankind itself. The death of Hope’s mother had set in motion the series of events that led to Hope staying with the l’Cie that eventually saved Cocoon and then to the founding of Academia, the building of the Ark, and finally the new Cocoon. If he had not done those things, the future would be forever changed. And in that future, presumably, Caius won.

Yes. There he was—astride the gunship, massive blade drawn and preparing to strike through the craft before it could fire on the bridge.

“Caius!” Noel shouted, pointing, and Hope realized with a start that he had nearly forgotten his companion’s presence until now.

“Noel,” Hope started, his voice breaking. “Noel, we have to—” he couldn’t finish.

“What? Focus, Hope! We have to stop Caius from whatever he’s planning!”

It should have been so easy to just say “Yes.” To pull back and let Noel fly, a blissfully oblivious weapon aimed at Caius—but through Caius, his mother. But Noel would never have to know.

Hope could not form the word.

Noel shook Hope by the shoulders. “Hope, what’s wrong? We have to go after Caius!”

“That’s my mom,” Hope whispered.

“What?”

Caius’s blade pierced one of the gunship’s cannons, shearing it in two before it could fire. No. Already it was different, already Caius was altering the past, altering the future. Soon a little boy would reunite with his mother, would flee and forge a different path. Who would this alternate Hope become? A Cocoon researcher, helping keep the fal’Cie alive? Would he make it to Pulse, and eke out a short and hardscrabble life on an alien world? Or perhaps it was all futile, and he would die in the Purge as did so many others.

He couldn’t afford to find out.

I’m so sorry, Mom.

“Go,” Hope said. His voice sounded all of his four hundred years.

Noel turned to stare. “Hope? Are you—should we do this?”

“We have no choice.” Hope ran toward the gunship, leaping upward. He activated the manadrive on his wrist and felt the force of something almost like magic propel him so quickly he could nearly outrun his tears. Somewhere Noel was behind him. It didn’t matter. Caius was heading toward the second cannon, and if he tore through that one, the future would be changed. 

Caius turned as Hope landed. “You know you want this, Hope Estheim,” he said. “She can live. This can be the true timeline. Let it happen, Hope.” Hope pulled out his boomerang and threw. The blast of his mother’s firing on the gunship threw off his aim; the blade went wide as he went down to his knees. Hope knew the return arc would take too long; he couldn’t get to him in time.

Through blurred vision, he ran at Caius. Behind him he heard Noel land, but there was no way either would make it. He raised the manadrive one more time. A trickle of that old and remembered power flowed through his arm; a gust of wind picked Caius up and slammed him against the metal of the gunship. Hope reached the edge of the ship as Caius heaved himself up—but it wasn’t Caius who caught Hope’s eye. He looked past Caius, past the ship, down toward the bridge.

Below his feet, the heavy _clack-clack-clack_ of the cannon firing. The force of it ran through his body.

He could not look. He must bear witness.

The final explosion, the hot glow blasting everything with heat and light. It lasted too long, the glow, and Hope realized—glancing below the gunship, Hope saw it: the shimmering golden light of the Gate.

The bridge began to collapse. He saw her, dangling from Snow’s arm, white like a warrior dove, like a flag, but never one of surrender.

Hope threw his arms around Caius and shoved. They fell, as she was falling, mother and son, together in this final and lasting moment. He did not look as she disappeared into the void, closed his eyes and felt more than saw the golden glow through his eyelids, as he and Caius passed through the Gate.

Goodbye, Mom.


	10. Comrade

He hit hard, hands and knees, against the stone of the cavern. Caius was gone. Slammed his hands against the ground in frustration. “Bastard! That bastard! I’ll kill him myself.” 

Hands on his shoulders helping him to his feet. “Hope,” Noel began, facing him, then trailed off. He hesitated, then gently raised a hand and brushed at Hope’s cheek. In frustration, Hope wiped at his eyes. Where was his long-cultivated self-control? “I’m sorry.”

The anger bled off, replaced by something older. “I’ve spent four hundred years running from that moment,” Hope said quietly. “It made me who I am, but there isn’t a day that goes by that the boy in me doesn’t wish I could undo it.” He twisted the manadrive on his wrist; it was almost entirely out of charges. “I just had the chance. And I didn’t take it. I don’t know if I did the right thing.”

“You did do the right thing, Hope. You did the _only_ thing. If you’d changed history, you’d create a paradox. You’d be living a false life—one that could burst at any moment if the paradox resolved itself.”

“Yes, but when you’re inside it, you don’t know that, do you?” Hope replied, his voice bitter. “Inside it, it would be possible to be happy.” He turned and walked away, back down the tunnel toward the Springs. “We need to get back, Noel. We’re finally one step ahead of Caius. Let’s not lose our advantage.”

“Wait, Hope! Where’s your boomerang?”

With a curse, Hope patted himself down, to no avail. “Damn,” he said, digging through his pack—an attempt he knew was futile even while he was doing so. “I didn’t retrieve it after I threw it at Caius in the Gate.”

“That means—”

“I have others back in Academia,” Hope said, cutting Noel off. “Until then . . . we were already being careful.” Hope avoided saying the obvious, but Noel’s glance at his wounded shoulder suggested they were thinking the same thing.

Noel positioned himself in front of Hope. “You’ll let me take point.”

Hope nodded. “Let’s move quickly.”

Taking a different and hopefully less-traveled route than the path taken on their way in, Hope and Noel snuck cautiously through the Mah’habara Subterra, bypassing Sulyya Springs entirely out of concern that renegade soldiers would be camped there. After several painfully silent hours, Hope stood once again before Atomos. The fal’Cie waited silently in his channel, a chasm easily a hundred feet or more in depth. As they approached the geodic opening in the fal’Cie’s side, Noel held out his arm in warning. “I’ll go first.”

Hope nodded. “I doubt anyone would enter Atomos, but I’ll defer to you.” He was right, he realized a moment later—but not in the way he hoped. A dozen metallic tendrils burst forth from the chasm, anchoring themselves into the ground; with a series of loud _zips_ , Guardian Corpsmen burst out of the ravine, weapons drawn and trained on Hope. Instinctively, he reached for his weapon, but his hand brushed against his pocket and came up empty.   
The soldiers fired. With reflex born of desperation, Hope activated his manadrive, throwing up a hasty shield. The bullets lodged in midair, frozen in the force field, and Hope threw himself after Noel. “Noel! Soldiers!” As he landed inside Atomos, he felt more than heard the small crack of the datasphere in his pocket. Noel rushed out into the open, a gale of wind preceding him; it swirled, a living thing, tossing several soldiers back into the ravine. Scrambling out of Atomos behind Noel, Hope tried not to listen as the bodies struck the bottom far below. He scooped up one of the fallen soldiers’ guns and turned to see Noel locked in combat with a Corpsman while another sprung up from behind a boulder to fire at Noel’s back. Hope fired off a shot a moment before the soldier could shoot Noel. He crumpled just as Noel plunged his blade into his opponent’s torso. Whirling, Noel went after another soldier while Hope used his expiring manadrive one last time to throw up a shield. From his cover, Hope took careful aim at another quarry’s head. He tried in vain to pretend the soldier had no name, no family who would receive a solemn delegation and a helmet of lacquered silver. It didn’t work. He pulled the trigger anyway.

With his last shot echoing in his ears, it took Hope a moment to realize that the erstwhile battleground had fallen silent save for the moan of the Guardian Corpsman Noel had stabbed. “Let’s go, Hope, before more come,” Noel said, cleaning his blades on a dead soldier’s garb.

“Hold on.” Hope pulled the remaining soldier’s helmet off and dragged him inside the fal’Cie before it roared to life, crushing the fallen soldiers in the ravine in its passage. The moment Hope saw the blood staining the man’s abdomen, he knew he was mortally wounded; indeed, Noel’s blade had passed straight through the soldier, and he had mere minutes left. Regardless, Hope pressed his hands to the man’s side to hold the wound closed. “We’re going for help,” he said, knowing the man wouldn’t last nearly long enough.

“It won’t matter now, Director,” the soldier gasped. “There are more of us, and sooner or later, we’ll get to you.”

“Why?” Hope asked, ignoring the threat. “Why’re you doing this?”

“Four hundred years of your orders,” he replied through a crimson grimace. “Four hundred years of ‘Interim Directors.’” The soldier took in a shuddering breath, and Hope could hear the rattle that heralded the end. “You left us all to follow you, blind. Like a fal’Cie.” He grabbed at Hope’s hands on his abdomen, trying to pull them away, resisting even this last mercy. “Look at yourself. Are you a director . . . or a dictator?” He spat a bloody gobbet of defiance at Hope. 

Hope was quiet. It was true, to an extent: he had been pulling the strings of the world for four hundred years. How did that make him any different than Barthandelus? Noel’s angry voice cut through the silence. “How can you say that?” He grabbed the soldier, shaking him. “He’s going to save us all!” Noel’s face was twisted with a rage that alarmed Hope. Then he realized: Noel needed to believe that Hope was right, that his plan was right, and that he would save everything. Save Noel’s dead world. 

The soldier’s sudden wet gasp and shudder brought Hope back to the present. “Noel, stop! You’re killing him—”

“Too late,” Noel said, letting the Corpsman’s body slide to the floor. “I already did.”

Neither spoke another word while Atomos rumbled through the Subterra. Hope watched the soldier’s blood spread, then pool as it too could go no further. The Corpsman had no visible identification, of course, but Hope figured that somewhere on his person he would have—yes. Pulling out the soldier’s datachip, Hope activated it. Caelan Alden, Lieutenant First Class. He pocketed the datachip. 

When Atomos ground to a halt, Noel strode out, then turned back as Hope lingered. “Let’s go. We need to hurry back before any other renegades come after us.”

“I’m not leaving Alden here.”

“Who?” Noel looked genuinely confused.

“Lieutenant Alden. This soldier.”

“Hope, he’ll slow us down. Don’t let him betray you twice.”

“No. We’ll take his body back to Academia. And send soldiers I trust back to retrieve the corpses of the others. They were fighting for Academia, Noel.”

Noel threw up his hands. “We’ll tie his body to my chocobo, then. Let’s go.”

While they rode across the Archylte Steppe, Hope inspected the datasphere. He suspected the surface of the sphere was cracked, but, to his dismay, Hope discovered that the fracture was more than cosmetic. He hoped at least some data would be recoverable—his life would likely depend on what he found within. Well, he’d figure out soon enough: before long, the base of Cocoon stretched impossibly down in front of them, and around the base like glass stalagmites spread the towers of Academia.

“We can’t just ride in this time,” Hope said. “They’ll know I’m gone.”

“And this complicates things,” Noel added, gesturing at the corpse of Lieutenant Alden. “We’ll have to sneak in somehow so if renegade soldiers don’t already know, they don’t see us and figure out that we’re on to them.”

“You could go in first and I could lie low—”

“Like hell am I letting us get separated now, Hope. Did you forget the part where you almost died three times out there?”

Hope bristled. “It was _hardly_ three times, Noel. I can handle myself.” Wrong. He marshaled his anger, taking it for a second and inspecting it, turning it over in imaginary hands to figure out why Noel had gotten to him. Stress. The assassination attempt, his feelings for Noel, his sense of weakness now that he was no longer l’Cie, and the thought of failing his own people, either if his plan didn’t work or if he had in fact become a dictator . . . “No, you’re right, Noel,” he said, feeling his anger dissipate as he allowed himself to understand its source. “We can’t get separated now, not with the renegades likely aware that we’re on to them.”

“I’m sorry, Hope.” Noel looked down at his hands knotted tightly around the chocobo’s reins. “It’s just—I feel like I let Serah down, and I’m worried I’ll let you down too.”

“It’s fine.” He knew what Noel meant, but he didn’t want to discuss it. “New plan: we just walk right in.”

Noel’s head snapped up. “How is _that_ a plan?”

“Easy. Put a blanket over Alden’s body. There’s a guard post just inside the city. Have them escort us back to the Academy in vehicles, but place them in isolation immediately. Then we corral every person whose name is on this datasphere.” He left out the part where the datasphere might be useless now. And his very strong reservations about rounding up his own soldiers.

“That presupposes that the guards stationed there aren’t rogue.”

“Look, if that many guards are against me, I have a new and bigger problem.”

“That’s a chance you’re willing to take?”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

Noel hopped off his chocobo and pulled a blanket over the soldier’s corpse. “I do hope you’re right.”

“So do I.” Hope spurred his chocobo forward toward the gates of Academia.


	11. Weapon

The southern edge of Academia led to a narrow valley, the egress a wide gate in a shimmering wall of glassteel that spanned the gap between the cliffs and towered almost as high as the escarpments. Above the wall, so designed to repel the megafauna that still called Pulse home even after four hundred years of human resettlement, the spires of that human settlement rose taller, stretching back toward the broken cradle they had left behind.

Hope and Noel stood between the wall and the world, making final preparations at the edge of the clear-cut terrain leading to Academia. “Here we go,” Hope murmured to himself. Drawing rain hoods over their heads, Hope and Noel walked their chocobos through the gate, where dirt gave way to even terrain wrested back from nature’s grip. 

The command post was just beyond the wall, among the first fortified structures within. Hope marched straight up to the door and barged into the command post. Behind him, Noel entered, the blanket-shrouded corpse of Lieutenant Alden slung over his shoulder. “I’m Director Estheim,” he announced, throwing back his hood and waving his ident badge as guards rose hastily, reaching for weapons. As their scramble turned to salute, Hope strode to an instrument panel and punched in a memorized code. In an instant, the room darkened as terminal screens winked out and reinforced steel plates slid over the windows and doors. Hope handed his badge to the commanding officer, who inspected it and saluted. “This facility is under complete lockdown. No one is to enter or exit except on my orders.”

“Director Estheim.” One Corpsman, his insignia indicating he was a Captain and in command here, bowed cursorily. “Captain Palumpolean, sir. Is there an emergency?”

“Of a sort,” Hope replied, noting the captain’s surname—a common one now that having a family that once resided in the hometown of the Director was considered an honor. “But not imminently. Be at ease, soldiers.” He turned to Noel. “This is my companion and ally, Noel. I’ll need you to take us to the Academy in an armored convoy.”

“Sir. We can dispatch a regiment—”

Hope cut off the captain. “I will require all of you to come.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, if I may, this is highly irregular. Are you concerned for your personal safety? Should I alert the Academy?”

“Thank you, Captain. That won’t be necessary. What _will_ be necessary are speed and discretion. One last thing, Captain—your men will need to surrender all personal communications equipment. Shut down this post and come with me to the Academy.”

Not three minutes later, Hope, Noel and the entire station’s personnel were barreling down an Academia highway headed straight for the Academy headquarters. Lieutenant Alden’s corpse had been placed in storage—though not without some sidelong glances from the soldiers. Hope had ordered the battalion run without lights and klaxons, but civilian traffic still fled the path of the armored vehicle, scurrying aside in a fashion so frantic Hope could only surmise such interruptions were unheard of. 

With stage one of his plan underway, Hope turned his mind to stage two: quarantining the soldiers until he could be sure they had no connection to the plotters. Again he cursed his ascetic existence in this era: who could he trust to keep these men from leaking any information upon his arrival? The problem was a cascading one: trusting another group of soldiers to guard these ones would require trusting _two_ groups, not one. Better, then, to trust in Captain Palumpolean—and hope that his squadron trusted him in turn.

“Captain,” Hope said quietly. “A word.”

“Yes, Director, sir?”

“I can’t help but note that your family is also from Palumpolum,” Hope said, knowing full well that the Captain would know exactly where Hope grew up. Much to his chagrin, Hope’s life story was taught to every schoolchild in Academia. 

“Yes, sir. Took the name eleven years AF. My ancestors lived near Felix Heights.”

Ancestors. Strange, to have a conversation with a man for whom Felix Heights was about as real a place as Oerba—oh, you could visit it, if you undertook the faux danger of the Cocoon tourism industry, but Felix Heights had long since become a well-tended ruin, artfully arranged into a state of unlife so attractive to a certain subset of urban explorers who cared much for experience and little for authenticity. 

For Hope, though, Felix Heights was—well, not home, but not a place that had ceased to be anyone’s home four hundred years ago. Even though both of his parents were gone, it still felt as though if he tried hard enough, he should be able to return. To visit, and still find life there. Now, life only returned for four sunlit hours a day, set to travel back to safety before night fell. Doubtless he’d find his childhood home well-preserved. 

“I grew up in Felix Heights,” Hope replied, knowing Captain Palumpolean would be well aware that the district was home to the Estheims before the fall. “I bet my family and yours lived quite close to one another. My parents probably saw your ancestors at the markets all the time.” Hope saw Noel’s eyebrows quirk slightly and imagined the other’s confusion— _why is he reminiscing about his childhood at a time like this?_ —but Hope knew Noel would understand soon enough.

“I sometimes imagined that as a child,” Captain Palumpolean replied, and Hope knew he had him. “I never thought I’d get to meet—” he stopped, remembering himself. “Sir.”

Hope put a hand on the captain’s shoulder and closed out the script. “You’re a good man, Captain. I’m glad to have met you.” He squashed his discomfort; if the legend of Director Estheim kept him alive long enough to see the new Cocoon rise, he would use whatever tools he could get his hands on. “And now I must ask you a favor, Captain Palumpolean.”

“Yes, sir.” Immediately. No hesitation.

Hope spared a glance in Noel’s direction. He could see now that Noel had indeed figured out what he was doing. “I have been made aware that there is a plot to assassinate me,” Hope said, lowering his voice so only the Captain and Noel could hear. “The body in this vehicle is that of a man who tried to kill me. He failed.”

“What?! But—”

Hope held up a finger. “I don’t have time to explain,” he said. “I will more fully later. For now, I need your trust, and I promise you I will repay it in kind when I can.”

“Yes, sir. My men and I are at your disposal.” 

“Thank you, Captain Palumpolean. We will need to get inside the Academy via a secret entrance known only to the Director.” One that would need to be redesigned as soon as the soldiers learned of it, Hope knew, but that’s the thing about bolt holes: they were pretty much single-use. Sometimes that single use even ended in a successful escape. “It leads to a defensible wing of the Academy under my direct control. I’ll need you and your men to accompany me and set up a perimeter while I defuse the plot against me.”

“We can do that, sir. I trust my men. Every last one of them.”

“And I am sure they trust you, Captain. Which is why I am glad to have you by my side.”

The highway curved to begin the dramatic swing around the Academy building rising from the center of the city; Hope directed Captain Palumpolean to take a service offramp. Pulling up his hood, he ordered the vehicle to stop some distance away from the Academy complex. Disembarking, he waited for a moment while the captain issued orders: “Form up, men! Keep the Director in the center until he takes point. Your mission is to guard him with your lives.”

Noel fell into step beside Hope. “And your mission is to make sure none of them shoot me in the back,” Hope murmured to his companion.

“Already on it,” Noel replied. “Looks like we got lucky.”

“Or they’re biding their time,” Hope replied grimly. “Far better to spring a trap when we’re inside corridors virtually nobody but me knows about.”

“I had considered that,” Noel conceded. “Are you sure you want to take them with you?”

“ ‘Keep your friends close,’ ” Hope replied. 

Noel sighed. “I’m going to have to assume whoever said that didn’t get assassinated.”

Hope headed toward a small, squat warehouse a half-mile from the Academy headquarters, where he punched in an access code, flipped open a plate, and pressed his palm to the biometric sensor underneath. The door slid open and Hope led the squadron within. 

Once inside, Hope shut the door. Noel moved in front of it, keeping his eyes on the soldiers. Hope nodded at Captain Palumpolean. “Captain, if you’ll help me move these crates,” he said, grunting as he threw his weight into the stack. The captain and two other men helped shove them aside, revealing a seamless floor. Hope bent down and felt around for a moment, muttering to himself, then let out a soft “Aha!” as the floor lifted and slid aside. A dimly-lit passage sloped away below the secret panel in the floor.

“If you will, Director,” Captain Palumpolean said. Hope nodded and the squad clambered down. Hope went down after them. Noel dropped down beside him and stepped behind Hope as the soldiers fell into step flanking their Director. They traveled thusly for a little over a mile before drawing up short against a heavy metal door. 

Hope pulled Noel aside. “If this is an ambush, this is where it will happen,” he whispered. Hope tapped his manadrive, then shook it, to no avail. 

Noel barely moved, but Hope could see the muscles in his shoulders tense, his hands grip his blades more tightly. “Why here?”

“This door is one-way. Once I open it here, we cannot come back—it is wired to my specific genetic signature and designed to slam shut milliseconds after I pass through, in case I am being pursued. You will all need to pass through ahead of me, and after we go through, we will be in a short passageway that leads to another door and, after that, my chambers.”

“Why not just go on alone, without them?”

“And if there are rogue soldiers in my quarters?”

“Right. Well, we don’t have much choice, do we?”

“Not particularly. Be ready.” Hope stepped up to the door, which slid upwards, disappearing into the dark ceiling above them. “Everyone must pass through ahead of me,” said Hope. “The door will slam shut as soon as I am through.” The soldiers moved forward under Captain Palumpolean’s command. Hope met Noel’s eyes and nodded; the latter stepped through, standing between the soldiers and Hope, who followed. 

The door slammed shut behind Hope as he crossed the threshold. Hope stood for a moment, his eyes on Noel’s back and, beyond Noel, the soldiers. Two heartbeats; three. No attack came; to a man, the unit faced forward, scanning for threats to come. Captain Palumpolean took point, then, realizing something was amiss, turned. “Director?”

Noel looked quickly over his shoulder at Hope. With a grim nod, Hope moved forward. “Testing the door,” he lied. “Let’s go, Captain.” A few yards further, Hope pulled up short against the final door. “This leads into my private quarters,” he said, placing his hand against the sensor. He looked up at the second sensor in the ceiling, which scanned his face and retinas. Two beeps later, the door slid open silently, letting out a slight _whoosh_ of the cool, filtered air of the Academy. Captain Palumpolean’s soldiers burst in, fanning out and establishing a perimeter. 

Before Hope could enter, Noel held up his hand and went first. A moment later, he came out. “The room is clear. We’ve set up a perimeter.” More quietly, he asked, “Do you trust them?”

“I think I do,” Hope replied.

“Then have them guard your chambers while you read the datasphere,” Noel said.

Hope led Noel into his chambers, giving Captain Palumpolean orders to set his men to guard his antechamber. Once within, Hope pulled out the cracked datasphere. “With any luck, I won’t need this. The data should have uploaded remotely,” he said, activating his terminal. 

A blank screen greeted Hope’s request to pull up the data. “Damnit!” Hope slammed his fist down on the console. “They did . . . something . . . to the data. It’s not here. They must have been jamming all signals out from the Springs. How, though?” 

Noel stared at the terminal, though Hope knew Noel couldn’t make sense of the lines scrolling rapidly across the screen as the system searched for over-the-air updates. “What do you mean? You didn’t get anything?” 

“Nothing. Bastards. They must’ve invented some kind of jamming tech during the Interregnum.” Much as he disliked it, that was the term the Academy used to describe the period during which Hope had been inside the gravity well. Inserting the cracked datasphere into its slot, Hope muttered, “Cross your fingers that this works—otherwise I won’t know how deep this goes.” Data popped up on the screen: a cipher of letters and numbers. “Ah, here we go,” said Hope. “Interesting. It wasn’t encrypted on their console, but moving the data also encrypts it—but that’s easy enough to solve.”

“How?”

“If you don’t know what this data contains, a brute force attack might take months. But fortunately, we know at least one name and rank—our late friend Lieutenant Alden. And I have his entire file here on my system. Plus I saw the original, decrypted data, and I remember the cells and orders it described. Between that plaintext and decryption algorithms, this shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

“A few minutes? Is that more like two, or twenty? They could move on us in that time!”

Hope gestured toward his sealed-off quarters, to Captain Palumpolean’s men stationed outside. “Not if they don’t know where I am. The way we entered is completely private—no one left alive has access to the entry and exit data. And my terminal commands are separate from the main systems so as to protect myself and my work. Even if this goes all the way to the top, all they know is that I’m missing—and note that no general alarm seems to have been sounded regarding my disappearance, or Captain Palumpolean would have mentioned it.”

“I find that unsettling. Why?”

“It means higher-ups have chosen to keep my disappearance a secret,” Hope said, gesturing at his terminal’s news screens. He pulled up the latest alerts; none of them were about him. “I can’t be sure why. Perhaps they’re allied with the renegades? Either way, it’s likely they don’t want the embarrassment of having let the Director get away—especially since senior-level Guardian Corps know about the assassination. Doubtless special ops teams, probably Blitz Squad, are searching for me as we speak, but the entire headquarters hasn’t been alerted, or this whole facility would be a beehive of activity and all of our renegade soldiers would’ve scattered to the four winds. And since we killed all the men we found, I am sure there is confusion in their ranks—if they realize that something is amiss at all.”

Noel looked skeptical. “What are the chances they haven’t realized we killed several of the traitors?”

“Better than you’d expect,” Hope replied. “Underground movements within a military hierarchy like this one tend to be organized in such a way to create as much plausible deniability as possible—and I already know from the data I did manage to see that they’re organized into small cells whose members are kept secret from other cells. That means only a very small number of people know who all the players are. And if they are being careful about communicating, they won’t know I’m back or even that we killed both cells we encountered. Ah.” Hope pointed at his terminal. “Looks like we’re decrypted.”

Noel pulled up a seat. “And?”

Hope was silent for a moment. “Damn. It’s what I was worried about—it’s corrupted.”

Noel groaned. “After all that? Are you sure?”

“The datasphere cracked when I hit the ground earlier,” Hope admitted. “It seems to have damaged some of the data. But it looks like most of it is here and legible, so we can still learn a lot.” Hope set his terminal to scanning the data. “Great. Seven percent corruption. Even assuming that’s all names and nothing else, we can still arrest the vast majority—and, through them, figure out the remaining dissidents.”

“Given enough time, we can,” Noel cautioned.

“Time we don’t have,” Hope agreed. “A point well taken, but I can’t change my plans now.” He turned back to reading to forestall Noel’s argument. The orders were clear enough, and proved Hope’s initial suppositions correct: the current dissident movement had grown out of the planned coup and installation of a military leader of the Academy around 270AF. When that had failed, they had gone back underground for over a hundred years—and now that the Director had emerged, they were indeed planning to assassinate him tomorrow in order to forestall Hope’s long-running plan to shepherd the human race back onto the new Cocoon.

He had everything he needed to round up most of the dissidents, but something was missing. Why would the dissidents be so eager to halt the progress on the new Cocoon? No one disputed that the old Cocoon would collapse. That means they had some other plan—something they preferred to the Academy’s official strategy. But what? Hope kept reading—and found it. “Oh my,” he murmured.

Noel, who had clearly stopped scanning the screen alongside Hope, looked over. “What is it?”

Hope shook his head. “Noel, can you go check on the Captain?”

“Is he on the list?”

“No. But . . . get the names of all his men, please?”

Noel rose, thankfully not realizing that Hope had memorized all their names long before they had entered the secret tunnel. When he had left, Hope turned back to the screen, staring at correspondence dated 398AF:

_Sir,_

_The program has reached a critical milestone. Subjects report increased stamina, agility, and physical and magical ability. Fifty-seven percent of subjects continue to fall short of l’Cie benchmarks, but the remaining cohort meet or exceed our desired benchmarks._

_Given our partial success, we propose breeding subjects who meet the benchmarks with one another in order to ensure reliable progeny and attempt to strengthen desired characteristics. Subject pool is large enough to avoid excessive consanguinity and potential autosomal recessive disorders._

_Given strict requirements around interbreeding with the general populace, several subjects have asked for dispensation to engage in relations with non-citizens from the Archylte Steppe. It is imperative that we determine whether such liaisons be allowed in the name of preserving subject happiness and thus order, or terminated to ensure these modified humans do not breed among non-citizens._

_I await your orders._

Hope had wondered how Noel came about his preternatural speed and stamina. Now, he feared, he had his answer. If these engineered humans would indeed interbreed with the Farseers, then in three hundred years, it was possible that Noel could be the result of the dissidents’ breeding program—and if Hope terminated the program, he could create a paradox in which Noel would no longer exist.

As if on cue, Hope heard Noel’s footsteps. Hastily, he wiped the screen. “Hope? I’ve got all the names—what’s wrong? You look like you’ve found something even worse than what we’re already dealing with.”

Before, Hope had seen—continued to see, in front of him now—the peerless beauty of Noel’s whipcord form, his lupine grace. Now he saw something else: a body so perfectly tuned to its purpose that it could only be the result of human intervention. A weapon. One that the dissidents planned to aim directly at Hope. “It’s nothing,” Hope lied. He had to proceed, but how? If he failed to act, he would likely die—but one misstep and Noel could vanish, and without him, Hope would have no way to undo his mistake. 

Still, he could only move forward. “It’s time, Noel. I’m ordering the arrests.”


	12. Lover

Hope lay in the half-darkness, unable to sleep. Noel leaned against the doorframe, silhouetted in the dim light of the hallway beyond, determined to stay awake despite an entire platoon of soldiers standing guard in shifts in the antechamber beyond the locked door leading out of Hope’s quarters. The light through Hope’s half-closed eyes stretched long into the room, a stark rectangle against the darkness, and Noel’s shadow and form looked strangely attenuated, stretching long and thin to the point of seeming to recede into an unknowable distance.

It wasn’t the light that kept Hope up. 

The round-up had been almost surgical in its precision: squadrons of whitelisted troops fanning out across Academia to disarm, incapacitate, and arrest those who had been on the dissident list. So many troops had been seized that the cells deep beneath the city were entirely full, with additional renegades held in larger holding chambers guarded by loyal soldiers who had been horrified to learn that corruption had existed within their ranks for so long. Hope had toured the cells and seen the guards’ shame, the way they had struggled to meet his eyes. Though they could not possibly have realized it, seeing that had restored something Hope had lost in his obsessive focus on rooting out the dissidents: despite the renegades, the majority of his troops—of Academia—trusted his leadership.

His advisors, who had offered up their resignations to atone for their dishonor, had given him the final count: out of the two hundred and sixty-four dissidents rounded up, sixteen had attempted to resist. By late evening, Hope had received reports of those encounters. In each, his soldiers had neutralized the renegade soldiers without loyalist casualties. As for the renegades themselves . . . perhaps his troops had taken their humiliation out on their erstwhile comrades: only nine had survived those encounters. Hope knew that their deaths were, aside from the dissidents killed in Sulyya Springs, among the first soldiers killed in action in over a hundred years.

The data corruption meant that some unknown number of dissidents had escaped—and they were certainly aware of the arrests by now. Despite Hope’s discomfort with the process, interrogators were pressing the captured soldiers for the names of their accomplices—but Hope knew it was unlikely they would be able to complete the full list by the time he gave his speech tomorrow. 

Yet that was not the reason for his inability to sleep. Hope couldn’t know if the successful roundup had sown the seeds of another kind of destruction: if the breeding program the dissidents had begun indeed gave rise to the line of powerful Farseers that led to Noel Kriess’s birth, had Hope unwittingly created a paradox that would instantly erase Noel—his only way to access the timeline—from that very timeline? And how destructive would such a paradox be? Would his error ripple across all of time?

But most importantly, at least to Hope: had he just doomed to nonexistence someone with whom he thought maybe, just possibly, he could build a shared future?

Perhaps he had managed to avoid the paradox. Perhaps they might just have hours left. “Noel, come lie down.”

Noel turned. “I should keep watch, Hope.”

“You’re no good to me tomorrow if you’re exhausted.”

“I’ll be fine, Hope. I don’t need much sleep.”

Everyone he had ever loved had left him. Alyssa, whose betrayal felt as much a paradox as that which kept her clinging to this timeline. Lightning, trapped endlessly at the end of time. Vanille and Fang, trembling as they held up the world. And he could see so clearly now, after four hundred years, his mother as the green mouth of a collapsing world swallowed her up.

So that was why, even after everything that had happened between them, it was still hard for Hope to say the words he really meant: “I need you here.” 

For a moment, Noel didn’t move. Then he slipped away from the wall, his shadow growing shorter in languid strides as he neared the bed. He stood over Hope, who felt a moment of toe-curling frisson. “The last time I let my guard down, we were almost captured—or worse,” Noel said. But his hand rested on the sheets an inch from Hope’s own.

“All my life, I’ve held the world at a distance,” Hope said, looking not at Noel but at his fingers, incongruously delicate, resting tentative on the satin, their weight pressing only the slightest hollows into the mattress. If he moved his fingers, how long would it take for the imprints to fade?  
Hope took them, pulling Noel down, making this real. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. And if this is our last night, you’ll forgive me for asking for what I want this once.” 

After, they lay together, entwined. Noel had fallen asleep; Hope pressed his face into Noel’s naked shoulder, feeling Noel adjust in his sleep to hold him more tightly as Hope settled into the groove between clavicle and neck. 

Surely now he should be able to sleep, but the world had invited itself back in, and in the darkness, it was always easier to acknowledge your fears.

What he needed was a walk, he decided. Slipping from Noel’s embrace—the latter somehow remaining asleep despite Hope’s movement—Hope fumbled for clothes strewn about the room. He escaped through the hidden passage from his quarters, ghosting down empty hallways built for the express purpose of conveying the Director safely away from prying eyes. Far from an aimless wander, Hope had a deliberate destination; before long, he stopped before a door, which picked up his biometric signature and slid aside, opening onto a passage that led down to the cells.

He continued past the rows of cells, separated from him by bars, electromagnetic fences, and one-way glass. He looked within at soldiers—former soldiers—wearing prison grays. They looked uniformly miserable, and he was reminded, as he had been with Lieutenant Alden, that they were men and women with mothers and fathers, possibly even spouses and children. They were traitors, sure, but beyond that, what exactly was the nature of their crime? A desire to live in a world free from the control of a four-hundred-year-old man? Was that truly so unjust a desire? Once his project was complete, were there not others who could lead as capably as he? Perhaps it was long past time to let them do so.

A concern for tomorrow, if he had one. Hope pressed on, past the rows of cells, until he reached the infirmary. If he was fated to die, he at least wanted to see her one last time. 

Hope looked down through the observation glass. The room was filled, every bed occupied and a few cots squeezed in besides, each occupied by injured renegade soldiers. So many injuries. And so many dead. Hope scanned the room; among them somewhere should be—

He froze.

Alyssa was gone.

Hope felt like someone had torn out his insides. It must have happened while he was away—Serah and Snow had resolved the paradox, or, worse yet, he had inadvertently done so when the Gate had taken him back to the moment of the Purge. 

He slid to the floor, not trusting his knees. Somehow he had let himself believe that he would feel it, the moment the paradox resolved, that he would know when his friend had left this earth. That it had happened, that she had slipped into nothingness without his acknowledging it, without any final valedictory words, that she had gone to her end knowing he had sentenced her here in her final hours . . . 

Hope put his hand to the glass. “I’ll remember you, Alyssa,” he whispered, because even now he couldn’t be angry at her the way any normal person would be. The consequence of too much time together. Maybe that had been a mistake. “Somehow, I’ll remember all of it. Even this.”

There was nothing more to do, no ears to hear the words he wished he could say. Hope stood and walked out.


	13. Spectator

The amphitheater was more akin to an arena than a stage, open to the sky and sloping dramatically both up and down in an open torus. The interior of the torus comprising the amphitheater was filled with tens of thousands of seats, and every one of those seats in turn was occupied. The speaker’s platform hovered in the air in the open center of the torus a hundred feet or more off the ground, connected to the inner wall by a long, graceful metal gangway which began at the center of the curving wall so the topmost seats of the amphitheater and those at the floor were equidistant from the speaker. The effect was to leave the speaker in the center of the ring, with every seat seeming to arc away from that central point. The platform itself revolved at a speed set by the speaker so as to ensure that no one was forced to look at Hope’s back for the entirety of his speech.

The platform also left the speaker terribly isolated. Hope stepped out onto the gangway, walking to the metal podium rising seamlessly from the floor in a sinuous curve. Words, perhaps his last ones, were a light blue hologram visible to him only. Beyond, past an invisible electromagnetic shield designed to repel arms fire, nearly a hundred thousand people applauded. The noise died down and Hope swore for a moment that the amphitheater was completely silent, waiting.

He began. 

“Citizens of Academia.” Hope spread his arms wide to encompass the entire sweep of the arena, setting the platform into a slow spin. Through the subtle shimmer of the electromagnetic shield, he locked eyes with Noel, discreetly positioned at the far end of the gangway. He had resisted, but Hope had told him he would face his fate head-on. Nothing was more important than the new Cocoon, he’d reminded Noel. Not even his own life. “I come to you today to say what I have hoped to announce for almost four hundred years: soon—in our own lifetime—our new Cocoon will be complete.” Almost unconsciously, Hope paused, his body tense: he had just said the words that set humanity on a course of action Caius desperately wished to prevent. The attack would come soon.

“In one hundred years, we will abandon this gleaming city, this first and last sanctuary on Gran Pulse. Make no mistake: though our soaring towers, wide boulevards and solid walls seem anything but temporary, Academia has always been humanity’s second cradle, a temporary refuge until the time came when our technology advanced to allow us to step forth once more into the heavens, until we were able to build a new home in the sky.” 

Hope gestured upward, the sweep of his arm taking in the new Cocoon and the old, though neither were truly visible within the arena itself. “That moment is now. In one hundred years, the pillar that holds the old Cocoon suspended above our world will fail. When it does, it will unleash a catastrophe unlike anyone has ever seen.” Hope knew that if one of the Academy’s secret projects, the Metashield, came to fruition, the damage wrought by Cocoon’s fall would be greatly lessened—but convincing the populace of the safety of the new Cocoon required some poetic license. Hope was not above a little persuasion. Besides, the Metashield Project might fail, and Hope couldn’t take that chance. 

“Where Cocoon crashes down, the earth itself will crack open. The fires will burn for a hundred years or more, and after they die a crater of molten rock will be all that remains of the old Cocoon. From our new perch, the surface of this world will seem locked forever in the grip of an interminable winter. Shattered crystal will form sharp snowdrifts dozens of feet deep and capable of slashing almost anything to ribbons. Wind will scatter pale dust to the corners of the world. Pulse will be an uninhabitable wasteland. Every living thing will perish.”

The Gran Pulse of Noel’s youth was that grim future, Hope knew. Every word he spoke brought Noel closer to him. “Every living thing, that is, except what we carry with us. Long before the old Cocoon collapses, we will journey to this ark, made with the hands and minds of the most capable among us.” Noel had asked him this morning if he was afraid. He was. He wasn’t brave like Noel, he’d said. 

Noel had kissed him along his collarbone, moving inward. “Oh, you are. Or you wouldn’t bear so much of the world on your shoulders,” he’d murmured into the hollow of Hope’s neck, and Hope had shivered and hoped, desperately, that this would not be the last time. 

“In the new Cocoon, we will be safe when the old one collapses. We will survive—and moreover, we will thrive. We have made a new world, one without the dangers that still stalk this place even now, hundreds of years after we returned to its surface. And when humanity outgrows even this new home, we will build new arks and venture forth even farther, toward the stars themselves. Remember this moment. Remember these short years. We are the last generation to walk on Gran Pulse. And we will be the first to build new lives on this ark, this new Cocoon.”

“I will join you,” Hope said. Now came the second of his three pronouncements. “But when I do, it will be merely as one of you.” The conviction that had been growing over the last few days had solidified into resolve last night. “The new Cocoon project has been my life’s work—and despite my seeming youth, I have outlived even the oldest citizens of Academia. But now that work stands nearly complete.” He took a step back from the podium. “After today, I plan to step down as Director of the Academy and allow the citizens of Academia to nominate my successor.”

Even from here, he could see shock ripple through the crowd. Well, he had one last surprise for them yet.

“And lastly, I would announce another program the Academy has begun.” Hope had carefully crafted what he would say next: a lattice of lies built around one central truth, all to preserve one very important person. “A program designed to build stronger guardians for Academia in order to ensure that if the fal’Cie of Pulse raise new l’Cie, humanity will be able to protect itself. Together, we will create the next generation of soldier—and ensure that all of humanity can take advantage of what we learn.” The only way to save Noel was to bring the breeding program into the light. He glanced over at Noel to gauge his reaction—and froze. It had begun. Two men in soldiers’ uniforms whirled shock batons in an effort to strike at Noel, and Hope could see the concentration in Noel’s face as he deflected their blows with his swords, shattering the helmet of one of the men. Hope recognized him—he had been one of the soldiers guarding Alyssa. 

As he turned back to the crowd, the first bullets struck the electromagnetic shield in a tight pattern a foot or so from his face. A dispassionate part of Hope almost admired the aim. The crowd erupted in chaos, shouts and screams rising from the stands as citizens surged to their feet, obscuring the shooter. Hope fought the urge to duck behind the podium or dive for the floor, instead pushing back his sleeve to reveal the manadrive he’d buckled to his wrist. He threw up a second shield of air, knowing the electromagnetic one would not withstand repeated punishment. He scanned the crowd, mentally working backward from the trajectory of the bullets to the likely gunman. There. A soldier surging against the tide of fleeing citizens, his gun raised to fire again. 

In one sweeping motion, Hope drew his boomering, darted out from his cover, and launched it, arm and shoulder and back muscles tensing and releasing. It described a wide arc, tracing the path his mind’s eye had sighted. The soldier leapt back in surprise, but not quickly enough: the razor edge of Hope’s boomerang sheared through flesh and bone and the soldier fell, mortally wounded.

Hope turned, noting a more immediate concern on the gangway: a third fighter had managed to get past Noel and his combatants. As his weapon returned to him, Hope threw, a short but forceful toss that would knock the soldier off the walkway. To his surprise, the soldier blasted it aside with a gust. Behind him, Noel was still locked in combat. The breeding program had strong early results, Hope noted as his boomerang returned to his grip.

Knowing he was likely overmatched, Hope decided to try a different tack. “You can’t win,” Hope yelled. “Not with everyone watching. You’ll undermine the whole breeding program this way.” In response, the soldier raised a hand; a torrent of fire erupted from it, flowing around Hope’s shield and reaching for him like a living thing. Hope deflected the reaching flames with a blast of ice, which he then sent sheeting down the gangway in hopes of slowing the soldier. It worked; he lost his footing and went to one knee before a hail of bullets struck him. Blood skittered hot across the ice as he slid and fell from the walkway. Hope turned and caught sight of the soldiers who had taken his quarry out. Noel was now surrounded by three fighters, but they were too close together for the sharpshooters to target. Whipping up a hot wind to thaw the ice, Hope darted across the gangway, flinging his boomerang at one of Noel’s combatants. 

It was then that the bullets ripped through his shield, and his shirt, and his protective vest, and his chest. The force of the impact spun him around, and in a dizzying moment he saw the entire amphitheater, saw his people cry out as one, before he slammed into the walkway. Then all he saw was his blood, so much of it, staining the floor, his clothing, his hands. He had always suspected that the reaction of the dying was a blessed confusion that would dull the knowing, but the part of his mind that had been still and sharp all these four hundred years knew what was happening. Sounds began to recede—he was going into shock—and the last thing he heard was the sound of soldiers’ boots fast on the metal gangway.


	14. Steward

When he came to, the room was dimly lit for sleep. The only noises were the soft sussurating in-and-out of the oxygenator and the slow beeping of machines monitoring his vital signs—the steady _beep beep beep_ of the heart monitor.

He had survived after all. There was a grim satisfaction through the pain in his chest. Caius had failed! He had tried—he tried so many times to thwart them—and yet still they had beaten him!

With trembling hands, Hope glanced at the damage. He was bandaged heavily across his chest from what he was sure had been hasty surgery to save his life. He had no idea how long he’d been out; he glanced at the clock near the bedside tray, but all it offered was the time: well after midnight. Noel had almost certainly gone to sleep after days of watchful, sleepless waiting, but Hope noted that he had left their two-way communicator on the steel table beside the bed. Hope reached out, grimacing against the pain as his muscles pulled against the wound, and picked it up, holding it in his hand. It was all the movement he could muster; he couldn’t even sit up, so weak was he from the shooting and the surgery. The com was warm to the touch, most likely from the electronics within, but Hope chose to imagine it was the heat of Noel’s hand. He held it to his chest, near the wound torn so close to his heart.

The haze of sedatives and painkillers left the edges of everything soft, indistinct, a photo out of focus. Despite the hour, Hope heard quiet footsteps in the hall outside the room: nurses, no doubt seeing to patients in other rooms. There would be less need for increased guard now that the dissidents had been forced out into the open. All was well.

Almost. Alyssa . . .

Hope had promised that he wouldn’t forget her, but he had meant more than that. She had done so much, made so many sacrifices for the people of Academia. He needed to memorialize that somehow, a monument or a statue so that the people for whom she had worked so hard for so long would—

_remember her—_

The heart monitor spiked— _beep beep beep_ growing faster as he suddenly realized—he thought his promise to remember her had stuck, that he was special, smart enough to overcome even the paradox, had bought into the myth of his own infallibility—

They hadn’t beaten Caius after all.

Hope fumbled for the com, his weak fingers releasing it before he caught it again, smashing the button to get to Noel. The footsteps outside—nurses, they had to be nurses, right?—came closer.

“Hope?” Noel’s voice, fuzzy with sleep. “Hope, are you alright?”

“Noel.” Hope tried to focus through the sedatives and the overwhelming _beep-beep-beep_ of his heart. “It’s Alyssa.” The footsteps stopped outside his door.

“What?” Hope could hear Noel trying to shake the days of sleeplessness. “Hope, are you okay? They gave you a lot of drugs. Do you need a nurse?”

“I still remember her. The paradox isn’t resolved.” Hope looked up. There was a figure silhouetted in the frosted glass door. Through the privacy glass, Hope could see the person punching in the security code. “Noel, she’s here. I need you.” Hope tried to will his legs to run, to even sit up and face her any other way but lying down, but the drugs and all the tubes and his own weakness, always his own weakness, left him unable to move. “Send for guards—I need help!”

“I’m coming!” Noel yelled, his voice so loud it was staticky over the com. There was no sleepiness in his voice now. The line went dead.

Hope groaned as he heard the _ding_ of the security clearance. In a moment the door would whoosh open. He was perfectly, utterly vulnerable. He remembered with a sickening clarity the order he had given when Alyssa was captured— _keep this under wraps; let’s see who else we can flush out if they don’t know she’s been caught_ —oh, he’d thought to outsmart Caius, but Caius must have planned this all along—so clever, always so clever, always plans within plans within plans. There was nothing Hope could do but listen to the _beepbeepbeep_ so fast, like his father’s heart in those final moments, chasing Hope’s terror in a self-reinforcing loop no sedative could overcome.

The door slid open. It was Alyssa. There was a knife in her hands.

“Alyssa.” It was a croak, a horrible sound that gave away, as if she couldn’t already tell from a glance, how terribly unable to defend himself he was. 

“Hope.” 

“You don’t have to do this. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“I don’t think there’s any other way, Hope. Not anymore.” There were tears running down her cheeks, but the knife was still and sharp in her steady hands. “I tried for so long. So long. I wanted it to be different. But he told me . . . he knew so much . . . there’s only one way out. That’s it. Just one.” She stepped closer to the bed. Hope tried again to stand, to shift up, to make a final desperate grab for the knife before she finished what the bullet had started, what the soldiers had attempted, what Caius had set in motion long ago and ages hence.

“Alyssa, we’ll find a different way. We can do it. Together. You and me. Just put the knife down—”

She stepped closer to the bed, but it was almost as if he wasn’t in the room. Her eyes were far away, fixed on some place that was neither this room nor perhaps even this timeline anymore. “I thought maybe if I worked hard enough, maybe if I helped other people enough, I’d be okay. Then they came. They came, and I knew even running into the future with you wouldn’t suffice.”

“You have helped other people. Don’t throw that all away now. Do you hear me, Alyssa? Don’t—”

“What happens when a paradox resolves itself?” Alyssa whispered, her eyes wide and wet. She gripped his hand. “Do you know, Hope? Do the good parts stay?”

“Alyssa—what do you mean?” Hope asked, knowing, dreading the answer.

“I was supposed to be the one all along, Hope. All the other stuff—all it was was a distraction. Oh, if they’d succeeded, so much the better, but I was the final one, the foolproof plan, the attack that would at last take you out. But what Caius didn’t know was that in the end, I’m just like him. I care more about someone else’s cause than I care about my own life.” 

Hope pulled feebly at his tubes and cords to try to get to her, to stop her. “This is our cause, Alyssa! You and me. Don’t do this.”

“I know you’re going to forget me,” she said. “That’s just how it works. But I hope you’ll look at what we did together and maybe some little bit of me will still be there somewhere. Save them, Hope. He means to kill them all. You’re the only one who can.”

And then Alyssa drove the knife into her chest.

It was not elegant. She gasped and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Oh it hurts,” she mumbled, pulling the knife free. Great gouts of blood spurted across her chest, staining the white floor in time with the final beats of her heart. 

Hope screamed, but there was no one to hear him but her, and she would be gone and worse than gone soon. She trembled, inches from Hope, but he could not move to reach her. “It’s cold, Hope,” she said. “It’s cold. But it’s not dark anymore.”

“Alyssa . . . Alyssa, please . . . ”

“They blew the roof off. There’s so much light. Oh, it’s so bright. I can see the sky.”

Noel burst into the room, weapons drawn. Hope would have sat bolt upright in fright, had he the energy—so weak was he from the shooting and the surgery. “Where is she?” he yelled, rushing to Hope’s side, casting his lupine gaze about the room and ready to strike. “Did she hurt you?”

“Who? Noel, what’re you doing?” Hope relaxed the startled grip he had on the tubes connecting him to the machines monitoring his vital signs. The slightly elevated _beep-beep-beep_ of the heart monitor resolved itself as he calmed.

“Alyssa! You said she was here—”

“Who?” Hope asked. 

“Oh.” Noel looked stricken. 

Confused, Hope reached out a hand to touch Noel, but he was too far. The haze of sedatives and painkillers left the edges of everything soft, indistinct, a photo out of focus. “It’s fine, Noel. No one’s here. I’m safe.” Noel stepped forward, letting Hope take his hand. He held it to his chest, near the wound torn so close to his heart. 

“All the same, I’ll stay here.”

“I’d like that.”

And all was well.


	15. Sentinel

Hope settled down into the small pod. Egg-shaped and engineered of smooth metal designed to be entirely seamless when sealed, it had no windows—a fact that still unnerved Hope, though of course any material other than the composite metal would be crushed by the physical forces necessary to generate the gravity well. And besides, he would need no windows where he was going—into the depths of sleep and earth and time.

In moments, the scientists would lower the egg into the bore dug miles below the surface. Behind it they would release the reverse-engineered antigraviton core, which would simulate enough gravitational force to slow time within the confines of the egg. Separated from the surface, Hope would slumber through a century, to rise once more with his greatest work, the new Cocoon.

“That’s it, then,” he said to the room. Unceremonious words for what was nevertheless a momentous occasion. 

The scientists left the room, joining his senior advisers on the observation deck above. Here, they would oversee the machinery that would lower the egg into place. A phalanx of Guardian Corps—all trusted men; the traitors who had surrendered after the attack on the amphitheater had divulged the full list of their surviving allies—marched out to stand guard outside the chamber. And Abeir Felix, appointed Interim Director until an election could determine a successor, shook Hope’s hand. “Good luck, Director,” Felix said.

“Not Director anymore,” Hope reminded the man. “Just Hope.” Indeed, he had refused everything they had offered, even the simple honorary title of Director Emeritus. When he awoke, he would be just a citizen again—the first time in five hundred years that Hope Estheim would be just another citizen of the Academy. “If all goes well, I will not see you again, Abeir.” Though it was not the first time Hope had spoken this valediction, it always left him heavy with a terrible, sad finality: he could only trace an irrevocable arc forward, never back.

“It has been an honor serving you, Dir—Hope, Sir.”

“It has, Director. You will do well.”

The Interim Director nodded once and stepped out of the room, allowing Hope privacy to say goodbye. 

It saddened him that, in a world full of billions who had followed his every word, he really only had one person to say goodbye to. Oh, sure, when he woke, his friends would be there—and moreover, he would hopefully be able to save two more from destruction. But here, in this era, he had held himself apart, knowing—perhaps fearing—that closeness would undermine his work. With that work nearly complete, maybe next time, he would allow himself to fully live.

And so he turned at last to the last person in the room. 

He knew it would be as though no time had passed. All the same, the idea of settling down to sleep alone after spending these last weeks together made him feel bereft, a ship unmoored. It was silly, he knew; he’d spent so long isolated that he was quite good at it, better at it than most anyone else, he’d argue. 

But still. He knew it was wrong; he couldn’t stop himself. “Noel, come with me.”

Noel shook his head. “I have to guard you. You know I can’t.”

“I wish you could.”

“I’ll be right here, Hope. I’ll be here, watching over you, until it’s time. And in a hundred years, I’ll be standing right here, waiting to see you, waiting to go into your new world.”

“Thank you, Noel.” Hope reached up, held Noel’s hand in his own. Kissed his fingers. And let go.

“Seal me in.” 

Noel placed his hands on the hatch, began to lower it. Hope nervously thumbed the sedative syringe at his side.

“Noel?”

Noel looked down, smiled. “Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too. Sleep well, brave one. I will see you soon.”

Noel sealed the pod. Hope jammed the syringe into his forearm, willing this to be over, willing himself into a future where they would be together again. He heard the whir of the great machinery and felt himself falling, falling into the vast darknesses at the foundation of the world, at the origin of dreaming—and in that infinite center there was only light.


End file.
